


Dear Robert....

by fannyvonfabulus



Category: Robert Downey Jnr
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Autobiography, BUT THERES GOOD STUFF TOO!!, Bromance, Bullying, Depression, Domestic Violence, Friendship, Gen, Gender Issues, Inspired by Real Events, Love, Male-Female Friendship, NaNoWriMo, Non-Consensual, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Rape/Non-con Elements, Real Life, Rehab, Rehabilitation, Self Harm, Sobriety, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, WIP, WriMo, except Robert being my imaginary friend, getting better, manic depression, my life, nano 2013, nanowrimo 2013, this all happened to me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:08:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannyvonfabulus/pseuds/fannyvonfabulus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You are imperfect and wired for struggle.</p><p>But you are worthy of love and belonging."</p><p>                                                                 - Brené Brown</p><p>Lucy is a manic-depressive alcoholic with gender issues, OCD tendencies and bouts of anxiety.  This is the story of her imperfections and struggles, her beginnings and ends.  </p><p>Through it all, she has the love and support of Tom, her almost too gay to function soul mate and Robert, her imaginary friend who also happens to be a Hollywood Superstar.</p><p>And it all starts with a letter......<br/> </p><p>  <em>The story of my life so far with RDJ as both the devil and angel on my shoulders</em><br/>WARNING: HEED THE TAGS</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It Starts With A Letter

**Author's Note:**

> This will, eventually, be my NaNoWriMo entry for this year. It's my first attempt at taking part and is my own autobiography told with a sprinkling of the fantastical in the shape of RDJ as my imaginary friend.
> 
> They say that you should write what you know and what do I know better? My own life. I'll warn you know, this could be uncomfortable reading for some of you so here's your TRIGGER WARNINGS:
> 
> Non-con, self harm, suicide attempts, alcoholism, drug abuse, bullying, violence, domestic abuse, anxiety issues, manic depression, OCD tendancies and rehab. HEED THE TAGS.
> 
> As you can see, this is going to be a riot of laughs to write but there is going to be happy, funny stuff in there as well. This is a very personal journey that I am treating as a form of therapy. All the things you will read have happened to me (aside from the RDJ stuff. And the beginning and the eventual ending). I've been trying to write this for years now so I'm using NaNo as the kick up the arse I need to make a start. I don't know if this will end up being the bare bones of the whole book for just the first 50k words or so.
> 
> This is also a heartfelt and very intimate thank you to Robert Downey Jnr. I firmly believe that he is one of the few reasons that I'm still here to sit and write this.
> 
> So, if you decide to come with me on this journey, thank you. And any and all encouragement will be mos gratefully received.

 

 

 

Dear Robert,  

Where to begin?  I have so many things that I want to say to you but I'm not entirely that words can ever be enough to convey what I have to say.  So I shall begin with two.  Just two little words that will never be enough but that will have to do.  

_**Thank You.** _

Seeing them written down, they don't mean much but I will attempt to explain what those two words mean.  Let me start at the beginning.  

My life is a truly unremarkable one compared to others, especially compared to yours.  I am nothing and no-one of any great importance.  No-one will ever write a book about my life (except perhaps me just for shits and giggles), or make a film about my existence; I'm simply just not that interesting.  The universe does not care about me or what I have to say but I'm going to say it anyway.  

Having been diagnosed with manic depression at the age of 16, I turned to the bottle a year later in an attempt to numb the pain and emptiness that depression brings.  When that failed, I turned to self harm.  I'm not proud of it but I did.  Anything to distract myself from the mental agony of being trapped in my own head.  The physical pain of self harming gave me a pain that I could physically see rather than just knowing that it was all in my head.  The drinking increased, as did the self destructive behaviour until at the age of 22, my doctor informed me that if I didn't stop, I wouldn't see my 23rd birthday.  In the harsh liht of those words, I had to assess my life:  A slow and painful death by my own hand or start again and carve a better life for myself.  I could carry on as I was and probably meet my end drowning in a sea of booze, drugs and prison, or I could grab my addiction by the balls and make it my bitch.  I chose the latter and I was checked into rehab.  If memory serves, we were both in rehab only a few months apart. And that leads me on to the entire point of this letter. 

I've been a follower of your work since seeing Weird Science at the age of 7 (I thought your hair was _AMAZING_ in that film by the way) and I've always tried to go and see your latest films as and when they come out.  My own downward spiral mirrored yours to a certain extent so when I found out about your own stay in rehab, it gave me hope that I wasn't alone.  Even someone that I admire so much from afar can have their own issues and demons to contend with.  Fame and fortune cannot cure an affliction like mental illness or addiction.  In fact, it probably made it that little bit worse. To have your every move documented by the press must have made everything all the more difficult. 

And then I watched as your star began to rise once more and shine brighter than ever.  That gave me the hope that I so desperately needed.  Knowing that you were beating similar odds helped me to latch on to that fragile ember of battered self belief and what inner strength that remained, left alone and forgotten amid the darkness and desolation that addiction and depression leave in their wake.  I reached into that darkness and pulled that ember towards the light.  I cherished it and nurtured it until it became the fire it is today.  It may not be burning particularly bright or fiercely but it's a damn good start.  And knowing that you were doing the same filled me with the knowledge that things _CAN_ and _WILL_ get better.  

When I read that you were to play Tony Stark, I was overjoyed.  Anthony and I have had an on again/off again relationship since I was 7, about the time I saw Weird Science for the first time (a coincidence? An omen?)  Tony's Demon In A Bottle storyline struck a deep and personal cord with me (well, aside from the genius, billionaire, playboy parts).  Long before Iron Man being made into a film was even a possibility, I have always pictured you in the role.  Whether or not that's because there are so many similarities between you both or just because you actually look alike I couldn't say.  It's just always been your face I pictured as Tony.   

 This all leads me to say that I am so fiercely proud of you, which is ridiculous because I don't even know you.  All I see from the outside is the you from interviews and magazine articles.  How can I be proud of someone I don't know?  What I  _do_  know is this: I'm unbelievably proud of someone I've admired for years who also suffers from a similar mental illness and a past addiction.  Someone who, despite the odds, beat his demons and won and who keeps on winning. A person who now gets to play Iron Man, a character loved the world over by children and adults alike.  I often employ my 'Tony Stark Media Face' to get me through some tough situations and I won't lie: it's kinda fun to take on that persona sometimes so I can only imagine what it must be like for you.  

I would also like to thank your amazing wife Susan.  I know what a huge part she has played in your recovery and she is a wonderful and extraordinary woman.  Whenever I see the two of you together on the red carpet, my heart sings with the joy I have for the pair of you.  Never doubt that the love you two so obviously have for each other is contagious.  I could certainly feel it when I was at the Iron Man 3 première in London and I left with a huge grin on my face because of it.  It's a rare, rare thing.  Should you ever actually read this, give Susan a hug, a kiss and a thank you from me.  She is a force to be reckoned with and one of a kind.  

I'd also like to ask that the next time you see a certain Jeremy Renner, throw a thank you his way too.  He's been as much a part of my life as you have since I was in rehab.  I've followed his work and his progress as closely as yours.  His outlook on life has got me through some dark times and his philosophy on making sure that fear is not a part of hi slife has helped me make some tough choices over the years.  You've both been an amazing influence and two pillars of strength when I need something to lean on.  

And so, here ends my story.  I hope that you do somehow get to read this.  I can only imagine the amount of letters that you must get. You must have touched so many people's lives over the years that I'm sure this letter will lie lost and forgotten beneath a mountain of others just like it.  I just felt the pull to put down on paper just what you mean to me and how you have been such an integral part of my life for so long.  You're an inspiration and an anchor point and for that I am  thankful. I even named my cat after you: Robert Meowney Jnr (Bob for short).  I know how much you love cats and thought you’d find that highly amusing.  

Now, I've waffled on for quite long enough.  If you happen to read this then I apologise for having to read something that you have probably seen a million times before.  Having written this letter, I've even started to put my life down on paper.  It's surprisingly therapeutic and it might even help me find some of those ever elusive answers.  Or not.  I've learnt to just go wherever life takes me.  Here's hoping it's somewhere interesting!  

So, from the woman with red and yellow hair at the London Iron Man 3 première that thrust a copy of Fur at you for you to sign, thank you.  Thank you from the bottom of my battered and bruised heart.  You have quite possibly saved my life on more than one occasion and for that there will never be enough or the right words to convey my thanks.  Just know that whenever you're having a bad day, there is someone across the pond that is very glad you're here on this godforsaken chunk of rock floating around the sun.  You make each day just that little bit brighter and a little easier to cope with.  You are a wonderful, funny, compassionate, inspiring and amazing human being. Don’t ever stop being you.  

_**Thank you.** _

With all my best wishes, love and squidgy hugs,  

_Lucy_


	2. And So The Story Begins....

**_And So The Story Begins........_ **

****

 

 

 

 

> **_"I think it is miraculous that anybody survives themselves.”_ **
> 
> **_Robert Downey Jnr._ **

****

_In a disgustingly large rented house on Oscar Night:_   

 _“Lucy Victoria Johnson, you WILL wear those blasted heels or so help me......”_  

  _“Thomas Walter Kyle, please do kindly fuck off so that I can freak out in peace.”_   

 _“You can’t wear those ghastly, rotten old trainers with a dress like that, you just can’t.  I won’t allow it.”_   

 _“I can and I will so stop fussing and get me a paper bag to breathe into before I throw up all over myself.”_   

 _It’s Oscar night, I am woefully unprepared and on the verge of having a complete and utter breakdown that will involve either throwing myself from the second floor window that I’m currently pacing in front of and running away, or bursting into hysterical tears and undoing all the good work the make-up lady has done.  She’s so lovely that tears aren’t an option as I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but she hovers near the door just in case the tears do decide to make an appearance.  Again._   

 _“Oh sweet holy monkey balls Tom, what am I doing?” I groan, pausing in my pacing to light yet another cigarette.  I don’t care if it’s not allowed inside the rented house, a pretty penny was paid to have such a prime slice of LA real estate for the week and I’ll smoke if I bloody well please._   

 _“Doing what you always hoped would happen? Following your dreams and other such guff?” Eyes a mixture of blue and green roll for the umpteenth time today and I roll mine back.   “Darling, just pull yourself together and let’s go and rub shoulders with the Hollywood elite.  And perhaps I’ll get to rub some other things as well.”_  

 

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ 

 

Contrary to how it must look at the moment, my life has been wholly unremarkable up to this point.  Well, perhaps up until a year ago or so ago when all this madness started.  Sure, I've maybe had more struggles than most, but in the grand scheme of the universe, mine has been an unremarkable and easily ignorable existence.  The fact that I am currently standing on the red carpet at the Academy Awards is all the by-product of an overactive imagination tainted by mental illness, addiction and fevered hopelessness.  It is by pure dumb luck that I'm currently standing here flanked by two of the three favourite men in my life.   I am unbelievably blest to be alive at the moment, let alone at the Oscars.  And I’m at the Oscars because what you’re about to read is currently up for Best Picture this year.  That’s on top of a number of other nominations too, not that I’m bragging or anything. I can hardly believe that it’s actually happening.  It’s as though this is someone else’s life, someone else’s reward for a life well lived.  This doesn’t happen to someone like me.  I’ve made so many mistakes, hurt so many people that this almost seems wrong.  But you know what?  I’m grabbing onto this and not letting go.  The past nearly 34 years have not been kind and despite my mistakes, despite my past, I’m taking this moment for myself.  It could all go to shit again from here so if my past has taught me anything, it’s that you live each day as it comes.  Make the most of every minute of every day because all it takes is for one slip, one manic moment and it could all be gone in a flash. And if anyone should know about manic moments it’s me.  I’ve had enough of them to know just how close to the line between life and death we all are.    

A hand slips into mine, dragging me back to the moment and reminding me that now is not the time to be thinking about those dark times.  I turn to the owner of the reassuring hand and my own hazel eyes meet those of molten chocolate with a mischievous glint and a look that tells of having done this a million times before.  The eyes belong to the irrepressible Robert Downey Jnr: my mentor, my guardian angel and one time imaginary friend.  He is an extraordinary human being and there aren’t many reasons why I’m still here but he’s one of them.    

“OK Kiddo?” Robert asks, head cocked to one side and I give him a nervous grin in reply.  He grins back and pulls me gently down the red carpet as we face the solid bank of cameras and flash bulbs of the paparazzi.  Not far behind us is my date for the night.  My Wingman, Thomas Walter Kyle: my best friend, rampant homosexual and an ever present blessing in my life.  Whereas up until a year ago Robert was just a figment of my imagination, Tom as been my constant, my very real anchor point and has kept me alive during my darkest moments.  He takes my other hand and I hang on for dear life as his lithe but solid frame towers over me, all six feet three of him and I’ll be forever thankful that he’s here with me.  Not that he had a choice in all honesty.  When your best friend is an actor and you write a book about your life that gets turned into a film, it’s only fair that the part he gets to play is himself.  It was one thing I wasn’t going to budge on when the powers that be were talking about casting.  I didn’t care how many amazing names they suggested, it was always going to be Tom in the part.  After a seeming eternity as my long suffering best friend, if there was ever a way of repaying him, that was it.  And what a job he did.  Having someone else play me meant that I could stand back and watch as the whole thing took shape.  It was harrowing and hard to watch, even take after take.  It nearly broke me all over again, watching what Tom had gone through with me.  Yes I’d lived it and yes, I’d written it but it was something different altogether watching it being acted out in front of me.  I’m still amazed that Tom is still by my side after what I put him through.  Putting him in the film seems a truly meagre way to pay him back for everything he’s done and I will spend the rest of my life trying to show him how truly thankful I am.  

The cameras flash and people call our names as we make our way up the red carpet.  We’re soon joined by other cast and crew, something else that I’m still struggling to get my head around.  When I was first in talks to adapt my book for the silver screen, I’d been asked who I wanted for the job.  I thought they’d just been asking as a formality so when I said Clark Gregg, I didn’t think they would actually ask him or that he’d say yes.  But they did and he did, much to my amazement.  He’d even offered to direct, much to my delight and as soon as he’d offered I’d accepted on behalf of the studio.  They weren’t best pleased but the film was so tiny and independent that the execs had just shrugged and said yes after a day to mull it over.  I’m glad that the book wasn’t going to be a big budget film. The smaller the better as it meant that I could have a lot of say in the process than perhaps I would have done if it was in the hands of one of the bigger studios.  And with Clark at the wheel, I knew that my ‘baby’ was in safe hands.  If I had known that being an alcohol dependent manic depressive would have got me here, on the red carpet at the fucking Oscars, then I would have written it all down years ago.  But then I doubt that I would have had the wherewithal back then to have even contemplated writing anything.  When you're slumped fully clothed on the kitchen floor covered in your own vomit and blood, you're hardly in the right frame of mind to put pen to paper.   

Mine is the tale of two lives that have been entwined for the last 27 years without one party knowing it but a tale that I will attempt to tell. It’s a personal journey that I wrote as a form of personal therapy and as a thank you to someone that has kept me sober and mostly sane over the last decade.  No, this is a story that has to wait to be told.  Wait until I was in a better place in my life, a happier place.  When I was more stable and better adjusted. So here I am, in my thirties and on the red carpet at the Academy Awards being flanked by two of my favourite people and wearing a pair of stinky old trainers underneath a dress that cost more than three months rent.  And I’ll be frank – I’m absolutely shitting myself.   

So let me go back to the beginning and explain how I got myself into this rather fantastical situation because I'm guessing that, from where you're sitting, there's nothing even vaguely unremarkable about me right now.  It's a long story and it won't be an easy read, I'll tell you that now.  It's going to be heavy going and hard work at some points.  But you already know how it ends so it can't be all bad, right?  

 

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ 

 

 ** _Summer._**  

 ** _The season of heady promise._**  

 ** _Never ending days of golden sunshine, caramel skin and lazy evenings.  The scents of jasmine and honeysuckle heavy in the late afternoon air and the sultry nights filled with laughter and close friends.  Gardens alive with the low hum of honeybees frantically gathering precious pollen and the welcome fragrance of freshly watered flowerbeds and lawns._**  

 ** _It is the season of love, laughter and happiness._**  

 ** _It is the time of endless nights filled with friendship and the strengthening of old bonds._**  

 ** _Summer is the season when we forget our age and dip our toes in the ocean of eternal youth and our fingers grow sticky with ice cream bought from singing vans at the end of the road._**  

  

I wasn’t abused as a child or shunned by my parents.  My family were loving, close and supportive.  We’re a big family, my mother being one of five and myself being one of 10 grandchildren.  I had plenty of friends growing up, Tom being one of them.  I wasn’t pressured to do well at school and we weren’t rich but my brother and I didn’t want for much.  All I all, I consider myself very lucky to have had such a well adjusted childhood.  Yes, my parents divorced when I was five and my mother struggled but we always had a roof over our heads and full bellies at bedtime.  We lived in the family home until after the divorce when we moved to a property that my Grandfather owned and we saw my father every weekend.  

My family are from a small town in Surrey, South East England called Cobham, somewhere we still refer to as ‘The Village’ which something it hasn’t been for a good many years now.  Gone are the days when everyone knew everybody else and the village was made up largely of families that had lived there for generations.  There are still a few of them, my family being one of them.  I live the furthest away but that’s still only about five miles down the road in another town.  Cobham is a lovely town, sitting next to the River Mole and surrounded by farmland but still only 20 miles from the centre of London.  It’s green and pretty and the perfect place for a child to grow up in.  My grandparents and uncles lived within walking distance and I spent my childhood feeling cherished and loved.  It’s a childhood that most people would have loved to have had and I feel blest that it was mine to live.    

My grandfather, rest his soul, owned a business that one of my uncles now owns and runs.  It’s a small group of shops on the main high street that began with the biggest, Farrants.  Primarily a newsagents, it is also a tobacconist, confectioners and stationers.  You can buy anything from your Sunday newspaper to a fountain pen and pipe tobacco.  It’s how my grandparents met each other but that is a story for another time.  My uncle later expanded the business to include a toy shop and small computer shop, all on the high street.  When my parents divorced, we moved into a property over the book shop, Forbes, which was a Tudor building at one end of the high street that backed onto the car park of the neighbouring fancy Italian restaurant. It hasn’t been a book shop for years now and instead houses a very successful second hand curtain shop run by a wonderful lady called Rosie.  I remember that she used to have two Border Collies that used to join in playing sardines whenever Rosie and her husband had a dinner party and we’d all had just the right amount of good wine to want to play a few silly games.   

I have lot of precious memories from my childhood that I cherish.  It was an innocent time, a respite before my life became so much more complicated and confusing and I often find myself longing for those days again. Days that were filled with simple, childish things like catching minnows down by the river bank with my grandfather.  Being taken to the Natural History Museum by my uncle Mark to be shown wonders from centuries and eras past.  Learning to ride horses then spending hours during the school holidays out in the baking sun riding around the local countryside and woods, the fields a patchwork of brown and orange, the earth having been scorched by the sun.  I can remember spending the long summer days riding around the restaurant car park at the back of our house on my bicycle with my brother, and the waiters from the restaurant playing football with both of us whenever they were on their cigarette breaks. If we were  _really_  lucky, the head chef would give us each a fresh orange sorbet to eat whilst we sat on the back step of the restaurant kitchen.  These days, I doubt any child would be allowed to do any of that.  The waiters would have been looked on as some sort of cult group of kiddy fiddlers, luring small children in with the promise of ice cream.  It wasn’t like that at all.  They were all from big, Italian families and treated my brother and me as one of their own.  We were perfectly safe and they made sure that we didn’t wander off anywhere we shouldn’t.  And they were certainly wary of any strangers so we were probably safer than most other kids.  

The relationship with my parents has had varying degrees.  I guess I’ve always been a daddy’s girl. We’re both so similar that it would be hard not to get along with my father.  I have a lot of his traits, like his stubbornness and his tendency to speak first, think later.  He is the reason that sci-fi and classic rock pumps through my veins.  We even have the same hands.  I have a few vague memories of living with him as a child but then I was 5 when my parents split up.  My brother doesn’t remember him at all as he was only 2.  As far as my brother is concerned, Dad has always lived somewhere else.  I don’t ever remember my parents fighting.  I asked my mum once about the break up and it was apparently all every amicable.  They were sat in bed one night and just decided not to be together any more.  The next day, Dad packed his bags and went to live with his mother, Nanny.  After that, we saw him every Sunday.  He would come and pick us up and we’d go to Nanny’s for a roast dinner, a stroll down the road then back for tea whilst watching Antiques Roadshow before he took us home.  In the summer holidays, we’d go and stay with him for a week.  He didn’t live far, only about 10 miles away.  When I passed my driving test and got my own car, I used to go and see him all the time, whenever I wanted.  My father is the strong and silent type.  He’s a traditional, working class man who takes no shit from anyone, doesn’t really agree with homosexuality and spends his spare time building scale models of tanks and Spitfires.  He could not be any more opposite from my mother and sometimes I wonder how the pair of them ever got together in the first place. Even 28 years after they got divorced, they still make snide little comments about each other. My mother is all fire, passion and brashness whereas my father is stoic, methodical and quiet.  It must have worked at some point or they wouldn’t have got married and had me and my brother but looking at them both now, it seems like the most ridiculous idea ever considered.  

My mother is a..... unique individual.  She has been having a midlife crisis for at least the last 5 years or so, around the time menopause took hold.  It started with buying a motorbike that was far too powerful for her after 30 years or so out of the saddle.  It then progressed to being out all night after someone introduced her to online dating, and buying bright pink leather jackets.  She then discovered holistic remedies and became some sort of new age glamour hippy.  Even now, when she’s practically dying of a sinus infection or flue, she’ll insist that hot lemon and ginger tea is the cure rather than take a veritable buffet of amazing over the counter drugs. Everyone has to put up with her coughing and spluttering for weeks on end whilst she cradles her Olbas oil and fennel twig tea.  But that’s nothing compared to when she found something called Neuro Linguistic Programming, dreamt up by a woman who ‘thought’ away her inoperable brain tumour.  What a load of old shite.  She even tried to get me to have some NLP for my depression. Seriously mother? You want me to try some fucking con artist’s ‘therapy’ rather than carry on with the carefully prescribed anti-depressants from my Doctor and counselling from a painstakingly selected psychotherapist? A professional,  _qualified_  psychotherapist at that. Yeah, I don’t think so mum.  Anything that involves ‘Time Lines’ and past lives as part of therapy can fuck off.  I have enough problems with my mental illness; I don’t need any of your crazy shit adding to it, thank you very much.  My mother and I have an odd relationship to say the least.  We used to be close, more best friends than mother and daughter.  Then my brother did something that I deem unforgivable and she took his side, despite hard evidence that he was in the wrong.  I won’t go into it now but ever since then, I’d say the relationship with my mother is ..... strained.  And I’ve not spoken to my brother for almost 3 years.  

Ah, my brother. Three years my junior and a bastard if ever there was one.  He is a selfish, egotistical arsehole.  He is a spoilt brat of the highest order and even at the age of 30, he still gets his own way as far as my parents are concerned.  Well, as far as my mother is concerned.  He hasn’t spoken to my father in almost 2 years.  Neither my father or I know why.  I suspect that he doesn’t even know why any more but it’s gone on so long now that he has no idea how to put it right.  He has always been what I refer to as ‘The Favourite’.  Yes, I was the first grandchild and had all the attention a child could want when I was born from four doting uncles and two sets of grandparents.  But I was a girl and when my parents produced a boy, well.  Needless to say that my uncles gave up pretending I was a boy because they now had a real life nephew.  I don’t resent it.  I remember being a little hurt and one of my earliest memories involves me at the tender age of three standing at the top f the stairs with a 2 week old baby in my arms and thinking about how easy it would be to just drop him down the stairs while my mother and godmother looked on in horror.  I didn’t by the way.  But I was so sorely tempted.  And it wouldn’t be the last time I thought about doing my brother some serious and irreparable damage, not by a long shot. He has been, and always will be a little shit that could do with being brought down a peg or two.    

We have never been close.  This isn’t the first time we’ve gone for long lengths of time without speaking.  The last time was just because our paths didn’t cross for years.  And we’ve never been the kind of siblings that hang out outside of family gatherings.  I don’t miss him and in all honesty, for most of my life it’s never felt as though I’ve had a brother.  It doesn’t sadden me that I don’t see or speak to him.  I don’t actually think I’d be all that bothered if I never spoke to him again.  He doesn’t care about me or his family, never really has done.  He thinks only about himself and if you are of no use to him at all, then he won’t even spare you a thought.  I sat and really thought about my brother the other day and I thought about if I love him or not.  The horrible thing is, I honestly don’t think I do.  I know people say that you may not  _like_  your family but you still  _love_  them blah blah but in this case?  I’m pretty sure that I feel absolutely nothing for my brother at all.  If he turned up on my doorstep one day battered and bruised with nowhere else to go, I would probably still take him in because a) that’s the sort of person I am and b) because he’s still blood.  But I would hate myself for doing it because I know that he would just take what he needed then be gone when he was done, all without so much as a thank you.  He nearly died four years ago in a motorbike accident.  He was in intensive care for 2 months and then in hospital for a further month after that. He lost over half his body weight, was in a medically induced coma for 7 weeks and needed round the clock care when he came home for another 6 weeks after that.  My mother remortgaged her house to take care of his rent and all his bills and when he came home, he came home to me and my mother and we took care of him. We worked in shifts so that one of us was always at home in case he needed us.  Ten, when he was well enough to go back to his flat, he went.  No thank you, no nothing.  And he  _still_  hasn’t paid my mother back the ten grand she got from the remortgage to cover his finances.  Not even after he’s had a grand total of one hundred and fifty  _THOUSAND_  pounds in accident compensation.  To him, ten measly grand wouldn’t even make a dent but no: he hasn’t given my mother a penny.  Just goes to show what a rancid little cretin my brother truly is.  Is it any wonder that I’m not bothered by whether he’s in my life or not?  

Anyway, enough talk of family.  Let me tell you about Tom.  

Thomas Walter Kyle, the best friend a girl could have.  If you believe in soul mates than that’s what he is to me.  He is my other half.  The Ying to my Yang, the Doctor to my TARDIS and the Kirk to my Enterprise.  He has been my friend my entire life.  Our birthdays are only a month apart and our parents were friends when our mothers were pregnant.  So, if you think about it, we’ve been friends since before we were even born.  I can’t ever imagine my life without him and goodness help either of our future spouses because they won’t be marrying just one of us.  Love me, love my camp-as-tits, giant other half of my soul.  It’s corny as shit but he completes me.  We were each other’s first kiss.  We lost our virginities to each other, after which he decided that yes, he was probably the gayest man on the planet.  Part of me thinks that I should be insulted by that but I’m just glad it was me that helped him realise that.  Better his best friend than someone who could turn into that psycho ex that posts dog shit through your letter box and slashes your tyres.  I can’t actually imagine having anyone else as my first for all that sort of thing.  At least we both felt safe with each other and didn’t make it a big deal.  Yes, it was fumbled and awkward but there was also laughter and it was unpressured.  I don’t think it did much for either of us if I’m honest.  Well, other than  _definitely_  decide on Tom’s sexuality. It brought us closer, I know that for sure and now my life would be a much poorer place without him.  I can’t ever imagine my life without him in it.  He’s been a part of my existence for all my 33 years and sometimes it’s hard to tell where I end and he begins.  Some people may call that a flaw but I just feel sad for them.  They don’t have someone like Tom in their lives so they seek to belittle what they are jealous of.  Yes, it’s put off some prospective partners in the past but then I’m not interested in anyone who isn’t secure enough in themselves to be comfortable with my best friend.  One day, we’ll both find people that complete the circle.  One day.  

So, that’s my family and the person that matters most in my life.  The other, ever present  man in my life has been a certain Robert Downey Jr.  Where Tom is my anchor, Robert has been my inspiration and a guiding presence, without which I may not have been able to be here today to tell my story.  He’s been a big brother, a fatherly and steadying force, there when I needed him.  It’s not a sexual thing, although I’ll be the first to admit that he is a beautiful,  _beautiful_  man.  No, it’s not sexual at all.  I admire him without measure and some of the best moments in my life have been just sitting in his house with him going over script changes while his wonderful wife Susan keeps us supplied with a never ending supply of coffee and tea.  Those moments have been some of my happiest: camped out at the huge patio table under an even bigger umbrella to keep the sun at bay, both still dressed in our pyjamas in the early afternoon. I feel privileged to have been able to have seen Robert like that, completely at ease and comfortable at home.  A home that he willingly opened up to a complete stranger that wrote an insane story about having him as an imaginary friend.  For all he knew, I could have been a complete lunatic but he opened his door to me anyway and welcomed me in like I was one of his own.  Even now, I still catch myself staring at him in disbelief until Susan gives me a pinch and a fond shake of her head.    

God, that woman.    

She is all kinds of amazing and watching the pair of them together is just pure magic. I’ve never seen two people so perfectly and completely matched.  The way they move around each other, each of them subconsciously aware of where the other is at all times without having to look.  It’s like watching a perfectly choreographed waltz, each knowing their part and where they fit against the other.  If Tom and I are two parts of the same puzzle, then Robert and Susan are the whole.  They are so obviously made for each other, a phrase that I didn’t give much thought to until I met them both and had the privilege of seeing them interact.  It’s a beautiful thing.  Something that only comes from two kindred spirits being lucky enough to actually meet each other.  And it’s a familiarity borne of facing struggles and milestones in life together.  Robert so obviously adores her and sees no shame in telling and showing her that as often as possible.  The way they are on the red carpet is much the same as they are at home.  She is a goddess in his eyes and he shows her that in the way he touches her, the way his eyes rest on her as though just being able to look at her is all the sustenance he'll ever need.  Seeing two people so utterly in love with each other is both a blessing and a curse.  The pair of them have wheedled their way into my heart and are there to stay.  But they also make me ache for someone like that of my own.  I don’t deserve someone like that, not after the things I’ve done in my life or the luck I’ve had.  Anyone that wants to be a part of my life like that needs to have thick skin and wide shoulders because I have a shit ton of baggage.  And in all honesty, if this is the only time I get to be happy, then finding my very own Susan takes a back seat because this right here, this time in my life is the happiest I’ve been.  And I’ll take that.  I’ll take that and embrace it because it probably won’t ever happen again.  

I should probably explain where and when Robert first came into my life before I get on with telling my story.  I should start by explaining that I saw a lot of films before I was old enough thanks to having four uncles.  I saw Jaws and The Exorcist before I was 10 and A Clockwork Orange by the time I was 12.  As a result, I now hate deep water, be it in a swimming pool or lake.  And you can forget the ocean completely because I never go in deeper than my knees and avoid any kind of boat if I can.  I’ve never watched the Exorcist again and I don’t think I ever will.  So, thanks to uncles who thought it was essential that I watched ‘the classics’ as young as possible is the reason that I was also educated in the ways of John Hughes as soon as they could get their hands on a bootleg copy.  And that's how I came to see Weird Science at the age of 7, all that time ago in 1987.  I thought it was  _amazing_.  I went on to devour any John Hughes that I could get my hands on after that, the Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink becoming firm favourites.  But it was Robert that I was truly entranced by.  Odd, considering that he’s not really in the film that much and plays a complete arsehole.  I became instantly obsessed with the big brown eyed little shit with the insane hair in that film. If you haven’t seen it, you really should because it’s a thing of wonder. Lord knows how much hairspray they had to use to get it to stand up like that.  I’m guessing a lot because it hardly moves at all.    

Around the time I discovered Robert, I also got in to Marvel comics, Iron Man to be more specific.  Looking back now, I should have taken that as a nod to the future given the path that Robert’s career has taken.  Even back then I made the connection and pictured him in the role of Tony Stark. I don’t know why as I had no idea of what was to come over the years and just how much Robert’s life would mirror that of Tony’s, but it just seemed like the perfect fit.  Ever since then I’ve seen Robert’s face whenever I read an Iron Man comic.  I had no idea that my own life would start to mirror theirs more closely than is comfortable.  Aside from the fame and the fortune and the superhero parts of course, but a mirror nonetheless.  It was from that moment on that Robert would become a permanent part of my life.  Of course, the man himself would have absolutely no idea about that fact until twenty five years down the line, but he was a part of it.  Whether I liked it or not, he was there and the seed had been sown.    

Taking stock of my life as I sat down to write this story, I realised I now can’t picture my life without him in it.  There have been others along the  way that became permanent fixtures but none of them have had quite the same effect as Robert as.  There is one other that has come close but he never appeared as an imaginary friend.  But I’ll get to that other person later down the line.  Having to look back, really look back, I’ve also realised that a hell of a lot more has happened to me than I remembered.  A lot of my past I have locked up and shut away as it’s been too painful to carry around every day.  I’ve learnt to compartmentalise other wise I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the mornings, let alone get dressed and go to work.  

Writing this as become a therapy, a balm for old wounds.  It’s one thing to spill it all to a therapist but I wanted to write it all down, to get it out of me and on to paper as a permanent fixture from pen and ink.  I have actually handwritten a lot of this over the years.  Various notes scribbled in notebooks, all of which I dug out and dusted off for this.  Finding old diaries and going through them has been hard and, at times, painful.  One in particular I found and had to put down.  I don’t remember writing the words that I saw spilled across the pages but I felt sick as I read just how very much in pain I had been.  I clearly had no-one to talk to when I wrote it so had poured it all out into a diary.  It’s hard to believe that it was the same person that wrote those things but I did.    

So, for those of you coming on this journey with me, thank you.  It’s not going to be an easy read but it’s a story that I wanted to tell.  Partly because I want to get it out of me and partly because I know that a lot of people who suffer from mental illness think that they're alone.  You're not alone.  You’re never alone.  If you take anything from this book then I hope it’s that you’re never alone.  

Lastly, this is a long and very personal thank you letter to one of the  few steadying forces in my life.  It started as just a simple letter of thanks, written and sent on the very remote chance that Robert would read it. That then became an idea to get my life story down on paper.  In turn, it became what is possibly the longest thank you letter in history with an ending that I still can’t believe is actually happening.  So, before I start my story, I’ll leave you with some of my favourite words from one of my favourite people: 

 

 

 

 

 

> **_“I’m a soldier who didn’t know how nasty the battle was going to be._ **
> 
> **_And now I’ve got a purple heart and I’m back.”_ **
> 
> **_Robert Downey Jnr._ **


	3. Just A Small Town Girl, Living In A Lonely World

****

**_“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”._**  

**Laurell** **K. Hamilton,** ** _Mistral's Kiss_**  

 

The start of the change began when I was 11.  On Tuesday 7th September 1991 to be precise.  That was the day that I was taken to start my new life at boarding school.  I had already sat the scholarship exam and passed with apparently flying colours.  It meant that I was about to have one of the best educations that money could buy, and on someone else’s money at that.  The Royal Masonic School for girls was founded by the Masons as a school for girls from broken homes.  Be that through divorce or the father passing away.  It was fairly radical thinking back in the late 1800's and when the school moved from Bushy Park to Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire in 1932; they already had an excellent track record for educating girls.  I was just the next in a long line of under privileged children to receive an education there.  Personally, I didn't see myself as under privileged at all but compared to the rich kids that went to the school, someone like me was seen as poor.  _Very_ poor.  Myself and the other foundation scholarship girls soon learnt that we were frowned upon and thought of as common and not really worthy of being spoken to by the other,  richer girls.  

Even though I had passed the exams, I still didn't really believe that my parents would send me off to boarding school.  My father was against it from the start.  Yes, he wanted me to have the best education that he and my mother could find for me but he didn't want me to miles and miles away in order for that to happen.  The poor bastard only saw my brother and I once a week but now he wouldn't be able to see his daughter hardly at all.  I got two weekends called Exeats a term at home and one full week in the middle for half term.  I was about to go from being at home with my mother everyday and my father once a week to seeing them both once every 4-5 weeks.  I think perhaps that’s the reason why I never truly believed it would happen until I was dressed in my brand new, slightly too big for me school uniform and standing next to the top bunk, single wardrobe and chest of drawers that was to be my home for at least the next year.  

I knew what it was like to stay away from home as I had stayed with my grandparents overnight before and at friend's houses.  But it was only ever for a night and I always went home the next day.  Suddenly, I was over 20 miles from home at the tender age of 11, scared, lonely and oh so very small.  I was in a strange place with people I didn't know and having to find my feet pretty damn fast.  It was terrifying.  Even thinking back to it now, it makes my stomach twist in anxious knots and the nausea start to rise.  I watched from the front of the boarding house as my parents left in separate cars and the realisation that it was all very real and most definitely happening finally sunk in.  I can remember my father's face before he left: hurt, sadder than I'd ever seen him before and desperately holding back the tears.  I've never held it against him, not ever.  He didn't want me to go and he fought my mother all the way.  

I will always resent my mother for it.  I know why she did it but I will never, _ever_ be able to let go of that resentment.  I felt abandoned and alone and, most of all, unwanted.  Even now, in my thirties, I resent her.  I know that the deep seated abandonment issues I have now all stem from that day over 20 years ago.  It is a wound that still runs deep and raw.  A wound that I have carried since that day as an 11 year old in a school uniform that was too big for her, watching as her parents left her in an alien place with unknown adults and a group of equally scared other 11 year olds.  As much as I try and for all the therapists I see, that wound will always be open, rotten and oozing.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to close it or even just ignore it. To a certain degree, especially when I am at my lowest, I will always be that girl: alone, frightened and so very far from home.   

Anyone that has been to boarding school will know that you need to find your feet pretty damn fast or you start drowning.  You have to figure out who you are or you’re lost.  I was slow on the uptake and there was no instruction manual for the 'fresh meat'.  This wasn't Hogwarts and there was no Hagrid to seek comfort from.  I was punished for this mistake pretty soon into my first term in the form of my very own bully, Claire Finnegan.  I had the shit kicked out of me for most of my first year and was often left bloodied and broken.  

I was picked on for being different.  I loved comics and Doctor Who, Star Trek and classic rock.  I dressed like a boy thanks to having been surrounded by mostly male role models from birth.   I was different and Claire didn't like that.  No-one stuck up for me either because I was different.  So, I gritted my teeth and I took it.  Took every punch, every kick and every biting comment about how I was a freak and a weirdo, and how my parents had sent me away because they were so ashamed of me.  There was no point in complaining or telling anyone.  I had to live in the same dormitory as her so there was no point in rocking the boat.  I hid the bruises and mopped up the blood and just didn't fight back.  

Until the beginning of my second year.  Then I fought back.  That first scrap resulted in being driven to A&E by my House Mistress.  No-one bullied me after that and I didn’t stand it from anyone else either.  I don't like bullies and if there was one thing that Captain America taught me was that you always stand up.  _Always_.  So I did.  I stuck up for 'the little guy' and went on a sort of crazy, one girl anti-bullying mission.  Even now I can't bear to see anyone being bullied.  I had a lot of fight in me and I guess I always have done.  My father taught me that.  My amazing, stubborn and ever supportive father.  An amazing man and the ever present, unchanging rock in my life.  Always there with sound advice and a cup of tea.  Always ready to listen and always,  _always_  there whenever I need him.  

Around the same time that the bullying started was the time that I first got a visit from Robert.  The first time was when I had managed to drag myself to the unused West End toilets at the end of the main school corridor.  No-one ever went in there except to have a sneaky cigarette.  I was spitting blood into one of the sinks after having had my lip split in the same place for the third time that week and I remember just being grateful that I still had all my teeth this time.  I looked up into the grubby mirror and jumped out of my skin when I saw Robert standing behind me shaking his head sadly.  

"You look like shit," He said to me and hopped up to sit on the sink next to mine.  I didn't say anything to him, just went back to spitting blood into the sink again.  He didn't say anything else, just sat and watched as I cleaned myself up and scrubbed the blood spatters from the porcelain of the sink.  When I looked up again, he was gone.  And that's how it started.  At first, I just put it down to being punched too hard in the face, some sort of concussion, it had to be.  He never really said anything when he appeared, just sat and watched with those big, chocolate brown eyes of his a mixture of sadness and anger as I patched myself up after the latest round of damage.  Then he just suddenly wouldn't be there any more when I next looked up.  It just became the norm for him to show up when I was bruised and bloodied.   

It's when he started to appear when I hadn't had a beating that I became convinced that I was actually going mad.  I was almost 13 by that point and had already taken up smoking.  I was huddled behind the hockey pavilion down by the main pitches, trying to avoid the harsh and biting December wind.  I was wrapped in all the knitwear I owned at the time and even some that I'd wiped from my roommate, Amy.  I was sat with my knees drawn up to my chest and as out of the wind as I could get, already on my second cigarette that morning.  Robert suddenly appeared next to me and if I was wearing a ridiculous amount of knitwear, it was nothing compared to how much he was had on.  I didn't think it was actually possible for someone to wear that much wool but apparently it was.  He slumped down next to me and burrowed as close as he could before taking a cigarette out of the packet I had lying at my feet.  He lit it, inhaled deeply and then watched as the smoke he exhaled mingled with his warm breath.  I watched him for a few long moments before looking back out over the frozen hockey pitches as the low winter sunshine glinted of the seemingly ever present frost.  

"Am I going mad?" I asked him, turning back to watch his exhale hang heavily in the frozen air.  

"Maybe," He answered simply and I nodded, hoping he was wrong but suspecting that I was right from the beginning.  He wasn't the result of a too heavy blow to the head.  I was losing it.  He was a figment of my imagination that my brain had dreamt up to help me cope with life.  I wasn't overly concerned because how harmful could having Robert Downey Jnr. as an imaginary friend be?  If it was just my brain's weird way of helping me cope with things then so be it.  I knew he wasn't really there so I at least had some grasp on reality.  It was if I ever started to believe that he was actually there that I'd have to contact the men in white coats and have myself carted away.  

"I don’t think I am.  Not yet anyway," I said, putting out the last of one cigarette and immediately lighting another.  Robert merely shrugged and carried on smoking.  We sat in comfortable silence again for a while and it was nice.  There was no pretence with him, no having to make conversation.  He was the product of my mind so I was essentially sitting with myself.  But it was nice.  

"Do you ever pretend to be a dragon?" I asked before quickly taking a drag of my cigarette and exhaling it to show Robert what I meant.   

"Anyone who says they don't is a dirty, dirty liar," Robert grinned back at me before doing the same thing.  

"Dragons make everything better," was my reply and Robert just hummed in agreement as we went back to sitting in companionable silence.  By the time I'd finished my next cigarette, he was gone.  There were no cigarettes missing from my packet other than the ones I'd smoked myself so I put his appearance down to a trick of the mind.  It was a moment of peacefulness and companionship that I didn't ever get to share with school friends.  The girl I shared a room with, Amy had become one of my best friends fairly quickly, but she was no Tom.  She was lovely and funny and I couldn't have asked for a better person to share a study with but I missed my Tom.  Robert felt like an extension of him in a weird way.  A comfort that I couldn't get from anyone else.  Robert was someone that Tom had admired for years already so having him around made me feel somehow closer to Tom.  I missed him terribly.  I called him whenever I had enough 10 pence coins for the boarding house phone, often calling him instead of my mother or father, and there was a shoe box under my bed already stuffed to overflowing with the letters he had written me.  I wrote to him at least once a week, although God knows what I ever managed to fill pages and pages of paper with.  Nothing ever happened at boarding school.  It was get up, get dressed, go to class, go to lunch, go to class again, half an hour of play time before dinner, then prep then bed.  Apart from the regular fights that I got into with various bullies, there couldn’t have been enough to write to Tom about.  But apparently there was because I kept writing those letters and Tom kept answering right back.    

Robert started showing up with alarming frequency after that moment in the winter sun and I just put it down to the surge of hormones coursing through my body thanks to puberty hitting hard and hitting fast.  Seemingly overnight I developed horrendous acne that plagued me right through until I was about 17.  My boobs also seemed to appear overnight and then the dreaded period arrived.  I was a spotty, greasy haired, pubescent, menstruating nightmare.  I couldn't control my moods, often ending up in floods of tears over something as pathetic as the school kitchens running out of croissants on a Wednesday.  I was also starting to question my sexuality as being surrounded by 649 other girls had suddenly made me very aware of the fact that I rather liked the female form.  That confused me as I also liked boys.  In the days before the internet and easy access to anything helpful, I kept my newly awakened sexuality to myself.  I tried to find something in the school library but I didn’t know where to start and there was no way I was going to ask the resident librarian - how embarrassing.  Judy Blume was of absolutely no help at all and there was no way the answers would be in Smash Hits magazine.  I thought about asking my parents but I was too frightened.  I didn’t really know back then what gay meant, other than happy because it was in all the black and white films I used to watch with my grandmother.  

I couldn't like both, could I?  Was that even possible, liking boys _and_ girls?  Maybe I just thought I was into girls because I was surrounded by them.  What did one even call someone who likes both?  Was I some sort of freak?  You had to like one or the other, right?  I was so confused about it all and on top of that, I had a face that looked like a Dominoes delivery so even if I wanted to do anything about all those confused feelings, no-one was going to want me.  I remember feeling very lost and very thrown off balance about it all.  

I had been brought up in a very male oriented environment.  Having four uncles and being the very first niece or nephew meant that I was treated as one of the boys.  The fact that nearly all my friends at school growing up had been boys, Tom being a prime example, meant that I was a stereotypical Tomboy.  Although, Tom doesn’t really count because I'm sure that even to this day, he is the daughter that my mother always hoped I'd turn out to be.  The man has more sparkly things in his wardrobe than even Cher dares to have.  But being surrounded by so much masculine energy meant that I had been disappointed for most of my life up to that point by the fact I was a girl.  I wanted so desperately to be a boy that Tom used to catch me crying about it sometimes.  He always told me that he understood and that sometimes, he was worried that he had been born in the wrong body. He thought that because he liked boys but he had a boys body meant that he was actually a girl trapped with the wrong biology.  I remember saying to him that I thought the same thing had happened to me.  I went home for the Easter holidays and told him about my revelation.  He said that maybe I was actually a boy and had just got stuck in the wrong body.  We would joke about it for years afterwards that we should both be in each other's bodies.  Then Tom would remind me that not only does he love cock, he also loves his own and wouldn't trade it for a vagina  for all the money in the world.  

It wouldn't be until a good few years later that I found out that the definition I was looking for was Bisexual.  And, to be even more specific, Genderqueer.  I like both men and women but I also feel like both.  Sometimes I like to be more masculine and sometimes I like to be more feminine.  There are days when I prefer to dress like a man and there are days when I dress in a much more feminine way.  I knew from a very early age that I was never going to be the girly-girl that my mother so desperately wanted.  I think she gave up on that hope the day that she took me to a party in a vomit-inducingly girly, frilly dress and within half an hour, I had it tucked into my knickers playing football with the boys.  I think I was about 5 years old then and I had completely bypassed the table full of girls, including the one who's birthday party it was, and had made a beeline for the boys instead.  They were playing with Lego and Action Man and then they went on to play football.  I was much more comfortable with them then I ever was and ever have been with girls.  It's better now I'm in my thirties as I know who I am but back then? It was awful.  And I was stuck at an all girls school which was all kinds of confusing.  One the one hand, I was surrounded by lots of lovely girls and I was in the grips of pubescent hormones making me horny all the time.  On the other hand, with that many girls en masse, it was a cruel and hateful place.  The bitchiness reached epic proportions.  Then, add to that the majority of them all going thorough puberty at the same time and you have a recipe for cruelty to each other of the likes I have never seen again.  And never want to witness again.  If any of you reading this is thinking of sending your girls to a same sex boarding school, for the love of Odin, don’t.  Unless they take day girls, don’t do it.  I would rather have spent those five years in Hades than at that school.  Hell would have been a fucking picnic compared to an all girl’s boarding school. 

Despite trying to convince myself that Robert was purely a figment of my imagination, part of me was starting to become seriously concerned that I was developing some sort of split personality.  Maybe I was.  Maybe Robert was some sort of incarnation of a broken and scared part of me.  He hardly ever said anything when he appeared, just answered any questions I threw at him with one word answers or contorted facial expressions while he stole cigarettes out of my packet.  Cigarettes that were never missing when I checked the packet later.  I was concerned but I was also comforted, which was a strange mixture.  Perhaps I had accepted that I was broken and looked on Robert as a sort of security blanket.  I never told anyone for fear of the bullying beginning again.  I was weird and different enough; I didn’t need anything else to add fuel to the fire.  Instead, I hungrily devoured any of his films that I could get my hands on.  Back then it was VHS tapes, not DVD’s and luckily, the house common room had a fairly decent video player.  If it was a particularly ‘saucy’ film, I could usually convince the 5th years to let me go and watch it in their own common room.  That was a perk not afforded to the majority of the house residents.  I loved it when I got the chance because it meant that there was tea and toast on tap, seeing as the 5th years were allowed to use one of the small kitchens that each boarding house came equipped with.  It was a mutually beneficial agreement: I got to hang out with the 5th years and eat toast and they got to watch a shit ton of films that their parents probably wouldn’t have let them watch.

I also read all the magazine interviews I could lay my hands on, which wasn’t easy in the days before the internet was there for everyone and actually any good.  Luckily, it being a rather posh and expensive boarding school, there were plenty of students there from all over the world and quite a few from America.  It also came in handy that my family owned a sweet shop.  It meant that my American friends would get their parents to send them copies of magazines in the post and I would trade them for sweets.  The fact that I had sweets practically on tap was very handy for a lot of things.  As was the fact that the family shop was also a tobacconist.  Tobacconist, confectioners, newsagents and stationers.  In exchange for the illicit contraband of cigarettes and sweets, I watched my Robert Downey Jnr. collection grow.  I still have a wooden box filled with magazines and taped-of-the-telly interviews and old VHS tapes of his films.  I have pretty much all of them on DVD now but every now and then, I like to get my video player out and watch Tuff Turf in its original format.  I read and watched them all, hungry to know more about the man that was a now constant fixture in my life.  While everyone else was fawning over Edward Furlong or Keanu Reeves, I was getting to know a man 15 years my senior.  He became a safe place for me, sitting in relative silence with him, smoking and knowing full well that he was merely a product of my fractured mind playing tricks on me.

As I was reaching the end of my 14th year, alcohol entered my life.  It was to become the other constant in my life.  It wasn’t difficult to get hold of, even at boarding school.  I had managed to befriend a couple of the 6th formers after we’d bonded over our love of Iron Man comics and having a steady supply of cigarettes just cemented the bond.  6th formers were allowed to leave the school premises after school and go down into Rickmansworth town for a few hours unaccompanied and they would often sneak into the local pub.  On their way back, they would sometimes stop in at the off licence and midnight feasts become less about the furtive consummation of sugar in the small hours of the morning, and more about the drinking of smuggled booze down in the changing rooms of the boarding house.  In 4th year, you were given a room of your won rather than having to share and mine just happened to have a sort of balcony under one of the two windows I had as my room was on the end of the house.  It wasn’t easy to climb in and out of the window, but a strategically placed chair on the outside made that a little easier.  In the summer, we would squeeze into the tiny space that the sort-of-balcony afforded and, as long as we were quiet and the house matron’s window wasn’t open, we could smoke and drink to our heart’s content.  It became a Friday night tradition after a while and I would often wake up with a hangover the next day.  Not ideal when I seems to be on the school sports team for pretty much everything and would usually have some match or swimming meet at the weekends.   Drinking began as a rite of passage, something I did with my peers as a stamp in the passport of teenage years.  Like the smoking, underage drinking was something you did to fit in and make you a member of the club.  It made me feel like a member of the gang: accepted and powerful and I liked it.  I liked the buzz and the illicitness of it.  I liked that warm feeling that would spread throughout my limbs with the tingle of pleasant drunkenness.  I loosened up when I was tipsy.  I found it easier to talk to people, easier to fit in. I wasn’t necessarily loud or obnoxious, but I was much more jolly and happier to joke around.  I felt comfortable to be around people, something that I wasn’t overly keen on but put up with seeing as being at boarding school meant I was _always_ around people.

When I went home in the school holidays, I’d go drinking with Tom and my friends at home as we’d all hit the age when it was the done thing.  Tom and I would always be the ones sent to the bar as we were the tallest and for some reason, that meant that we would be the most likely to get served.  I still don’t understand that logic but I wasn’t about to argue as it seemed to work 9 times out of 10. I loved going home for the holidays.  Being home meant being able to see my father and Tom, the two people that I had missed desperately.  I had missed the Star Trek marathons with my dad and the sleepless nights with Tom talking about anything and everything until the sun came up.  I missed them both and I needed them both.  And I’ll be honest; it was nice to get home and be surrounded by the masculine energy that just simply didn’t exist at boarding school.  Sure, we had male teachers but only two that I can remember.  Mr Stengel, my form tutor and German teacher and Mr Young, the Latin teacher who seemed to run on nothing but coffee and nervous energy.  There was the Chaplin too but I stayed away from religion as much as humanly possible.  Not easy when my house mistress was also the RE teacher.  No, it was good to go home and be around my father, Tom and my uncles.  And my other friends from home who were nearly all boys.  In fact, I only had 2 friends that were girls back at home who I had kept in touch with since first school – Kate and Claire.  Another girl, Susan, would join the gang later on but other than those two, all my friends were boys.  I would revert back into Tomboy mode as soon as I was through my front door, much to my mother’s disapproval.

My mother was another issue.  After having me shipped off to boarding school, when I came home for my first Exeat after nearly 6 weeks at school, she had got herself a boyfriend.  Now, my rational, adult brain knows that he wasn’t my replacement but it bloody well felt like it at the time.  I was removed from the picture and she had got herself a boyfriend.  I took an instant and violent dislike to the poor bastard and made it very, _very_ clear to both him and my mother just how much I hated him and the whole situation.  If being left at boarding school had left my relationship with my mother on shaky ground then the arrival of Ray completely shattered any trust or respect that I had for her.  That was the moment when our relationship would never going to be the same again.  Even to this day, it’s not the same.  And all because she wanted me to have the best education she could get me.  Having to fend for myself at the age of 11, I had fast learnt how to care of myself and now she wanted to mother me.  From that first weekend at home, it would be an ongoing battle between us: her trying to be a parent and me fighting back and doing my own thing.  I had decided early on that if she didn’t want to be my parent and handed that responsibility over to boarding school then I didn’t need her to mother me when I was at home.  It would be an even bigger issue later on when I came home to do my A-Levels at a local college but I’ll get to that later.  It was just another reason on a long list that the drinking became a comfort.  It also pissed my mother off no end.

Robert would watch as I drank, often with nothing but a blank look on his face, neither approving nor really disapproving.  I’d read all about his arrests and the trouble he’d been getting into so he was no stranger to what I was doing.  In fact, what I was doing was considerably tame in comparison to his antics.  It was 1995 by that point and Robert was well into his drink and drugs phase, just as I was discovering booze and liking it.  I only had a year of boarding school left to get through and I’d already made the decision to do my A-Levels somewhere else.  In fact, I’d already decided on the 6th form college a few miles from home that funnily enough used to be a boys grammar school that my uncles had attended.  I was just happy that I only had my 5th year and my GCSE’s to get over and done with and then I could be back at home with Tom and all my friends.  It would mean living full time with my mother but by that point, I was completely independent so I didn’t think it would be much of a hardship.

One night while I was lying face down on the floor of my front room during the summer holidays and trying to get the room to stop spinning, Robert appeared lying next to me.  His hair was shaggy and all over the place, his eyes red rimmed and there was a half smoked cigarette hanging from his lips.  I rolled my head over towards him and cracked an eye open to look at him, the motion causing a wave of vodka induced nausea to wash over me. His head lolled to one side and his eyes took a moment to focus on mine.

“What?” I slurred at him, irritated by the judgement in his eyes.

“Don’t fall too far down this rabbit hole Kiddo,” He replied simply and went back to staring at the ceiling.

“I’m nearly 16, it’s what we do.”

“Yeah, but you like it, I can tell.  Just be careful is all I’m sayin’.”

“Fuck off,” was my reply and I went back to smushing my face into the carpet.  He wasn’t there when I managed to move my head to one side again.  I tried to analysis what he’d said but passed out before I could take his warning seriously.

I didn’t think that I was doing anything that a normal teenager wouldn’t normally do.  Drinking and smoking were rites of passage along with your first kiss and losing your virginity.  It’s like every teenager gets given a score card when they turn 13.  You should get a stamp for every milestone reached: hit puberty, try smoking, discover booze, have first kiss, lose the V-Plates, pass driving test.  Then when you hit 18, if you’ve got all the stamps, you can legally become an adult.  By the time I reached my 16th birthday, I had every stamp except the virginity and driving license ones.  And the driving license stamp I wouldn’t be able to get until I turned at least 17 and could legally have driving lessons.  And I really wasn’t overly bothered by sex at that point.  Sure, I talked about it with Tom and my other friends but it wasn’t something that I put at the top of my priorities list. Besides, I had exams to get through before I could tell boarding school to go fuck themselves and I could start all over again at 6th form college.

I sat my GCSE’s along with my other classmates and when that was done, I was allowed to go home.  That was a strange feeling.  All I had known for 5 years were the walls of an elite private school and I had hated every minute.  Sure I had made friends, friends that I still speak to today.  I don’t think that you can live with the same people for 5 years and not have some sort of permanent bond.  It’s a bond that I will carry for the rest of my life and there are times when I look back at those 5 years with some fond memories.  There was a sense of camaraderie and solidarity.  These were the people that helped me get through the majority of my teenage years.  My parents weren’t there to get me through it and neither was Tom.  I had to reply on the people I had been forced to live with.  After that rocky first year and the pain of being bullied and beaten, I had forged friendships that last to this day.  I don’t think they ever got all of me though.  That was a right awarded only to Tom.  He is the only person on this planet who truly knows all of me.  Every last pathetic, dark little corner of my psyche.  I learnt in that first year of boarding school that you never, _ever_ give yourself over to someone else 100%. _Never_.  I have made that mistake only once more in my life after that first year and I still chastise myself over it.  I should have known better. I should have learnt from the past by then but I didn’t.  That’s what happens when you fall in love.

It had become clear by the time I had sat my exams and waved goodbye to boarding school with my middle finger that something was wrong.  Having an imaginary friend was the first clue but I knew by the time I was 16 that I had started to develop some serious mental health issues.  I know that puberty can hit some people particularly hard but it was something more than that.  Robert’s appearances aside, there was something else lurking in the dark recesses of my brain.  It had probably always been there thanks to having a family with a track record for mental illness.  I am a firm believer that it is something that can be passed on through genes and my family was rife with it.  I had witnessed my mother having a mental breakdown when I was a child.  I can still see the image of my grandmother kneeling on the floor with my mother clutched to her chest as she completely lost it will be something I will never forget.  No child should have to witness a parent utterly broken like that but I did and I think I selfishly have always held that against my mother.  Parents are supposed to seem indestructible when you’re a child but it was at that moment that I realised that parents are just as vulnerable as anyone else.

That moment with my father came when he got the news that he had cancer.  Lymphoma in his cheek to be precise and that was possibly the most terrifying moment of my life up to that point.  Suddenly, I could lose probably the most precious person to me other than Tom.  My father is everything to me and I had never been more scared about anything in my life.  He got treatment as soon as they found the cancer and he went through weeks of agonising chemotherapy.  I was at school for a lot of it and I couldn’t stand that I wasn’t able to be there for him.  He was still living with his mother, Nanny, who was an elderly lady so how could she be expected to look after my father as well as herself?  But, Nanny was made of iron, carved out of granite in 1913.  Born on the eve of the Great War and then lived through the next one.  She was the strong pillar that my father needed and Odin bless her departed soul, she took care of him.  He made it through thankfully and he went on to be pretty healthy until a few years ago. 

All of this contributed to feelings and moods that were a lot more than just teenage hormones and I think I knew that.  I mentioned it to Tom one Sunday while we were mooching around his house.  His parents were an....alternative couple.  They were often away at weekends at some sort of hippy, finding yourself retreat so we had the run of the enormous Grade II listed building.  My mother didn’t care what I got up to if she knew I was with Tom, despite the absence of any parental supervision.  In fact, I don’t think she was particularly bothered what I got up to, even when I wasn’t with Tom.  Compared to my other friends, I had pretty much free rein to do whatever the fuck I wanted.

“Hey, here’s a question: do you ever feel sad?  Like _really_ sad?” I asked Tom that Sunday as we were sprawled over each other on his lawn in the sunshine.

“How’d you mean?”

“Like, really, _really_ sad?  Like there’s an ache in your chest that won’t go away?” I asked again as I rested my chin on his chest and peered at him over the top of my sunglasses. 

“Sure it’s not just heartburn?” He joked but that worried frown of his had appeared.

“Yes, I’m sure it’s not just heartburn,” I rolled my eyes at him and swatted his shoulder. A quiet fell over us for a few long moments and I traced idle shapes up his arm.

“Darling, is there something you want to talk about?” He asked eventually, sticking his sunglasses on top of his head so he could look at me properly.

“I don’t know. Maybe?” was my reply with a shrug of my shoulders.  “I’ve been feeling lately like there’s something...... not right.”

“How so?”

“Like, I feel sad _all the fucking time_.  And it’s not just sad.  It’s like there’s this huge, black hole in my chest that I can’t fill with anything,” It was the best description I had at that point but Tom seemed to get it.  He always did, the intuitive bastard.  I could feel the tears start to well up as he looked at me with all the understanding in the world in his eyes and not for the first or last time, I thanked my lucky stars that he was in my life.  “And......and there’s something else.  But if I tell you, you can’t take the piss, ok?”

Tom arched an eyebrow that said he knew how hard all this was for me to tell him and that I could tell him anything without the fear of him poking fun. 

“There’s.....I mean I have.....,” I took a deep breath and prepared to tell him the one thing I had never shared with him.  It was something that I had desperately wanted to tell him because I hated keeping secrets from Tom.  I just hoped that that he wouldn’t be too hurt that I had been keeping this one from him for years.  “I..... I seem to have acquired an imaginary friend in the form of Robert Downey Jnr.”

Tom narrowed his eyes a little at me, clearly seeing straight through me and knowing full well that I had been keeping that fact from him for longer than I was letting on.  What he said after that completely threw me.

“Is he here now?”

I was stunned.  Even though it was Tom, I had been expecting some sort of ridicule, some sort of incredulity but no, not Tom.  At the tender age of 16, he was wise beyond his years and just seemed to take it in his stride.

“Erm, no.  How the fuck are you being so understanding about his?  Your best friend just told you that she was seeing things in the form of a Hollywood A-Lister and you’re totally fine about it?”

“No, not fine.  Not fine at all.  Incredibly worried in fact,” Tom frowned and wrapped his arms around me.  “But I’m your best friend so it’s my job not to freak out.”  I sighed and lay my cheek on his sternum so that I could listen to the soft, steady thump of his heart.

“M’sorry,” I murmured into his skin and wriggled closer.  “Didn’t mean to weird you out.”

“It’s ok baby girl, I’m not really freaked out so much as worried,” Tom ran a hand up and down my back.  “Do you..... do you think you should maybe get some help?”

I thought about it for a few moments, not really sure of what to do but glad I had finally told someone.  Glad I had finally told Tom the only secret I had kept from him and that in itself was a weight that had been lifted and I felt a bit better about things.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right.”


	4. Aching Heart, Troubled Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **HEED THE TRIGGER WARNINGS***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRIGGER WARNING** 
> 
> Alcohol Abuse and graphic depiction of self harm - you have been warned
> 
>  
> 
> Also, I haven't really checked this chapter over thoroughly for spelling etc. I just wanted a more reliable word counter than the spreadsheet I made that I've managed to fuck up. Any and all errors are entirely mine.
> 
>  
> 
> Title of this chapter taken from the song Troubled Soul by Amy McDonald

 

 

 

 

_** “They say time is the fire in which we burn. Right now, Captain, my time is running out.  ** _

  
_**We leave so many things unfinished in our lives.”**_                                                                      

                                                                                                                                                     - _Dr Soran, Star Trek: Generations_ __

With boarding school now at an end, I suddenly felt rudderless.  After the regimented life of school, I found myself under my own supervision.  I was now responsible for my own bedtime, meal times and life in general.  At first, it was heaven.  I left school in the June of 1996 and I had until September when 6 th  form college would start.  That was 3 whole months in which to do whatever the fuck I wanted, whenever the fuck I wanted to do it.  I felt liberated and happy for the first time in a long, long time.  I was finally home again, out of the cage that boarding school represented.  Sure, I would miss a small, select group of friends that I’d made but as for the majority, I couldn’t have given a shit.  I had all summer to enjoy myself and spend all the time I wanted to with my best friend.  It was a little frightening suddenly having so much freedom and not having teachers breathing down my neck 24/7.  I had no homework to do and nowhere in particular to be.  Usually in the school holidays, I spent half the time alone.   Private schools had much longer holidays than public schools and I would usually have to wait a couple of weeks before my friends broke up for the holidays.   I used to use the time to get all my homework done so that I could just enjoy hanging out with them all.  Then I would have a week or two alone when they all went back for the new term.  It’s not that I  didn’t  see them at all:  we all lived within walking distance of each other.  It was just that they couldn’t be out late once school started again and they were gone during the day.  I used to just mooch around watching television until school was done for the day.  It was tedious and annoying but something I just had to put up with at the time.

But the summer of 1996 was different.  All of us were done with school by about the end of June and we were free.  No more school, no more homework and no more hassle.  Well, at least until the start of September but back then, those 3 months felt like an eternity.  Funny how these days, the equivalent time of the summer holidays seems to whizz by in the blink of an eye.  I used to get 2 months for my summer holidays.  Now, 2 months is hardly any time at all but back then?  It felt  like  forever, stretching long into the distance with the  tantalising  promise of time spent with good friends and sun soaked holidays.  I remember buzzing with excitement and when my mother came to collect me and all my worldly possessions all thrown haphazardly into my school trunk, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.  There were teary goodbyes to those that I had come to cherish but mostly, my skin itched to be as far away from that place as possible.   Everything was packed into the back of my mother’s ancient Ford Fiesta and I waved a blessed goodbye to 5 of the most hated years of my life.   At that point in my life, I didn’t know that things were going to get so much worse for me but I thankfully had no idea.  I  just  wanted out of there and as far away as it was possible to get.  I had the telephone numbers and addresses of those that I would keep in touch with but aside from that, god fucking riddance. 

As soon as I got home, I helped my mother unpack the car and get my stuff into my room but then  I  was flying back out the door and to Tom’s house as fast as my legs could carry me.  I had missed him.   I’d missed his stupid face and his ridiculous sense of humour.  I’d missed his smell, his hugs and, most of  all;  I’d missed my best friend.  And now I was free of boarding school, I’d be able to see him as much as I wanted.  Sure, we were going to have to get jobs for the summer and definitely when we started college but for now, he was all mine and I was desperate to see him.  I arrived at his door out of breath and sweating like a whore in a nunnery but I was there.  He’d obviously seen me flying up the drive and just as I was about to knock, he flung the door open and I was home.  Wrapped in the arms of the person I loved the most in the world.  It was embarrassing, but I couldn’t have stopped the tears if  I’d  tried.

“Hey, hey,” Tom chuckled, gripping me a little tighter while I gripped his ratty old Led  Zeppelin  t-shirt in my fists and buried my face in his chest.  “A hello would be nice!”  I laughed into his t-shirt, letting the relief wash over me and losing myself in everything that was Tom.  He smelt like home and I wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon.

The problem with being back at home was that I was back with my mother.  Not only that, but my brother too when he was home for the weekends.  He had also been sent to boarding school but his was merely a mile down the road.  He was still a boarder but he got to come home on a Friday and didn’t have to be back until Monday morning.  As if I had needed any more fuel to the fire that was resentment of a sibling.  It just confirmed the favouritism in my head and I filed that away in the box that contained every last thing I hated about my brother.  During the week it was OK as he wasn’t there.  I actually started to try and rebuild the relationship with my mother which was something I thought had died a long time before.  But then my brother would come home on a Friday and I would be forgotten.  I stayed out as much as I could at the weekends, often staggering home drunk or not going home at all.  At the age of 16, a lot of us were deemed old enough to be at home alone for a week or two while parents went off for their first holidays without the kids in tow.  Or at least not with the older children.  That meant that, for most of that summer, there were  a lot  of us unsupervised and with houses all to ourselves.  It was one party after another after another.  I’m pretty sure that I lived in other people’s houses rather than my own for the majority of that summer.  It was glorious.  We all felt like adults.  I’d long been  independent  thanks to boarding school and already knew how to cook and use a washing machine.  It was blissful.  We were going to bed whenever we felt like it, doing whatever we wanted with no-one telling us no or telling us what to do.  I spent most of that summer living at Tom’s house, only going home for clean clothes when I’d gone through all of Tom’s spare t-shirts.  My mother ordered me home a few times but I just ignored her.  As far as I was concerned, I was a grown woman.

And there in lied the problem.

Boarding school had essentially raised me.  I was at school more than I was at home so I was raised by a small army of teachers and house matrons, not my parents.  Especially not my mother.  She may have done the groundwork up to the age of 11 but the years after that, I was handed over for other people to mould and guide.  When I came home again at the age of 16, my mother tried to become the parent that she hadn’t been able to be while I was away at school.  And that’s where the fighting started.  She was trying to fill a role that was no longer there.  I didn’t want or need mothering.  In my 16 year old mind, she had forfeited that right when she left me at the front door of the boarding house 5 years before.  We locked horns constantly whenever  I  decided to go home: her demanding to know where I’d been and what I’d been doing and me just doing my best to ignore her.  We had  good days too though and would spend evenings out on the patio chatting long into the night.  Those were the days  that  she stopped attempting to parent me and became my friend instead.  Those were good days.

We’re so similar in many ways but so different in others.  We share the same genes so there’s bound to be striking similarities.  Not only did I inherit my father’s stubbornness but I also got my mother’s fiery and impulsive nature.  Having two people like that in the same house is never a good thing.  If she got on my case about something, I would give it right back.  The verbal slanging matches that went on between us were horrific.  We would both say some  truly  dreadful  things  to each other and sometimes even came to blows over it.  It usually got ugly pretty quickly.  It was hard because after 5 years of only being around a few times a year, I was suddenly back and it was going to take time to adjust to that, for both of us.  I just couldn’t deal with her shit so would be somewhere else as much as I could.  Looking back now, I should have given her a chance.  Part of me thinks that perhaps I should have let her mother me like she clearly wanted to.  Maybe she even needed to, needed to feel like she was making up for the past 5 years when I wasn’t there.  I do regret that slightly but I’m not sorry for some of the things I said to her, no matter how much they hurt her.  I still believe that some of those things I said in anger needed to be said.  There was only so much I could keep locked away inside before I started to rot me from the inside.  In all honesty, that was already happening but I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut when I was angry.

Aside from a strained home life, I was relatively happy.  Being able to do pretty much whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted made for a happier me.  After admitting to Tom that I had been suffering with a deep seated sadness that seemed to be ever present, the beginning of that summer was enough to chase away the dark clouds for a while.  I spent the time with friends, strengthening old bonds and making some new ones.  It was an almost innocent time, filled with laughter and belonging.  After years of feeling like an outsider, I finally felt that I could belong somewhere, safe in the warmth of old friends.   I got a job at the local stables so I had some cash coming in and life was good.   If I blocked out what was happening at home, I could almost believe that I was happy.  I was spending my days with horses, something that I had wanted since I was a small child, and my evenings with friends.  I house sat for some of my family which meant that I could pretend I wasn’t living at home and my life settled into a nice, steady pace.  It was good.

When I got my GSCE results, I went back to boarding school to collect them.  I saw  a lot  of the people that I had almost forgotten and it was a strange say.   There was excitement and nervousness about getting our results but also sadness, as for some of us, as that would be the last time in a long time that we would see or speak to each other again.   I hadn’t done too badly at all: an A, 4 B’s, 2 C’s, a D and an E.  It was enough to confirm my place at the local 6 th  form college under the proviso that I redid my Maths exam in the first year to get it up to a C.  I enrolled at the college in late August and at the beginning of September, Tom and  I  were on the local bus on our way to our first day.  We’d both managed to get into the same college but doing different subjects.  He was taking Drama, English Literature and Art whilst I was taking Biology, Sociology and Business Studies along with GCSE Maths again.  They were completely the wrong choices I would discover later and what I should have opted for was English Literature, French Language and Drama.  Still, the choices had been made and we were embarking on the exciting next stage of our lives.  We made fast and firm friends with a great gang of people, friends that we are still close to today and things quickly settled into days filled with classes and going out to new places.  Only having 3 or 4 subjects meant that the  days were less filled with classed than at school.  On Wednesdays for example, I had first lesson which was 9-10am and last lesson which was from 3-4pm.  That was a  recipe  for  disaster  because I very rarely ever made it to both in the same day.  I either couldn’t be bothered to get up in the morning or I just didn’t bother with the last lesson.  It became clear pretty early on that being left to my own devices and being responsible for my own time keeping was going to become an issue.  Tom did his best to usher me to and from college but there were times when he failed  spectacularly .  If  I  had been out the night before and gotten particularly drunk then he didn’t have a hope in hell of getting me out of bed in the morning.  Needless to say,  it  didn’t take long for things to start getting out of control.

Things at home started to deteriorate and my drinking got worse and worse.  I could cover it up when I was out with friends by it just being something that 17 year olds out on the town did.  Even if it was a Monday or Tuesday night.  When we weren’t all out clubbing and going to all the bars for student nights, we were at my local pub which was just a 10 minute walk down the road.  Everyone would walk to my house first and we’d have a few beers in the back garden.  It was pretty handy  that  across the car park from the back gate was an off license.  On the days that my mother and I were actually getting along, she would go and buy the booze and then come back and join us for a few drinks before we went off to the pub for the night.  It was a great pub.  It was nearly always packed to the rafters inside and out and it would take an entire evening to get round the place to say hi to everyone.  I felt accepted there back then. Accepted and loved by an ever growing number of friends.  My college friends got along with my friends from way back when and Tom and I held court like some sort of King and Queen.  In a way, we sort of were.  We went everywhere together and our friends used to jokingly call us Lord & Lady Kyle.  We were the centre of attention nearly all the time and it felt good.  I was having a fucking ball and I never wanted it to end.

Robert  was  around less and less during that first year of college.  I think mainly because I felt happier than I had for a long time.  Being back at home also meant that I had Tom back so my brain  didn’t  feel the need to summon my imaginary friend quite so often.  Of course, there were black days when I felt the hands tugging me towards the void which was when he would appear as a solid, comforting  presence .  Those were usually the days when Tom wasn’t around for whatever reason and I’d had a fight with my mother.  

Going into my second and final year of college would be the year that everything changed.  I had failed my first year of Biology so had to take the first year again.  I was failing everything else too and I wasn’t expecting to get any A-levels at all.  It was also the year that decisions had to be made about University and my future.  I had hoped to go to Cambridge, funded by the RAF so that when I left, I could follow my childhood dream of flying Apache helicopters.  Alas, my eyesight let me down and being outside the permitted  limits, which  was a future I wasn’t going to be able to  pursue .  I considered the Police but it was the same problem again, my eyes.  Instead, I applied for Equine  College  and got an unconditional place at the two best colleges in the country.  But if my  grades  carried on as they were, that wasn’t going to be an option either.

I just sort of gave up caring.  Home life was getting worse as my drinking increased.  Then drugs came on the scene, not that I really indulged.  I liked to smoke weed but that was about it.  I was coming home later and later on the nights that I was out on the town with friends, sometimes not until 5 in the morning, much to my mother’s annoyance.  I just told her to shut up as I staggered up  the stairs and passed out fully clothed on my bed. When the fighting got really bad, I would storm out of the house and head for the pub stopping by Tom’s house which was on the way and if he was in, we’d head to the pub together.   I’d then stagger home blind-drunk hours later, fall into bed and start the process all over again the next day.   My college work had started to suffer but I finally had friends that accepted me for me.  I had friends that were just as weird as I was and who loved comics, sci-fi and classic rock.  The drinking was just something we all did together.  I was happy.  Well,  I thought  I  was happy.  I didn’ t want to notice the nagging feeling that there was something much darker under the surface, lurking there and waiting.

I wasn’t happy at all.  I was miserable.  Yes, I was having a great time when I was out with my friends and the booze was flowing and the music was pumping but just under the surface, I was hurting.  It was the ache of a void that had always been there and seemed impossible to  fill .  The drinking drowned that out, obscured it and kept it quiet until the morning when I would wake with a pounding headache and a stomach twisted in  nauseous  knots.  I could only keep it subdued for so long.  More and more flashes of the darkness came through with more frequency.  I would drink to the point of tears and then drink some more until all I could see was the vast expanse of the nothin g ness that was lying in wait inside me.  I was slowly losing the battle against  its  clawing hands and I drank to try and escape it for just that little bit longer.

Then the cutting started.  

T he first time, I was drunk and angry.  After a fight with my mother and no-one to drink with, the darkness was calling and this time I listened.  I stole a bottle of cheap and disgusting whisky from my mother’s drinks cabinet and sat in my room with it.  I drank and drank until most of the bottle was gone and  that’s  when the voices started.  I listened as they whispered to me, telling me how worthless I was, how utterly pointless.  As I drank my way through the rest of the bottle I had clasped in my hand, the voices got louder and I remember going down to the kitchen and reaching for a knife.  In a desperate attempt to cut the voices out, which seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do at the time, I tried to cut the darkness out of me by carving into my arm.  For a few blessed moments, the darkness and the voices were quiet.  Then the flash of  agonising  pain took hold but it overcame the deep ache of nothingness that I felt in my bones.  I wept at how good the actual, physical pain felt.  It was a paint that I could actually see rather than a pain that seemed to permeate my very  soul  but that I had nothing to show for.   Then ,  just  like that, the buzz from the scotch was one and the realisation of what I had done dawned bright and real.  As I emptied the contents of my stomach into the kitchen sink with a screech of pain, a sure and warm pair of hands took over.  A tea towel was wrapped around the bleeding gash in my arm and as I looked up through the haze of tears and pain, I saw Robert.  His jaw was set and his eyes were full  of sadness and fear but he didn’ t say anything.  He just wrapped up my arm, poured the remaining scotch down the sink and bundled me upstairs to bed.  The cut on my arm wasn’t deep enough to need stitches and the bleeding soon stopped with the help of the towel wrapped good and tight around my arm.  I drifted off to sleep with Robert watching over me and I managed a weak smile before oblivion took me.

The drinking increased  and the cutting more frequent until I cut so deep one day that I found myself in A&E with no recollection of how I got there.  Tom was there, clutching my hand while the nurse patched me up, the worry obvious on his face.  The nurse  left when  a Doctor appeared and I vaguely remember him talking about various kinds of therapy that he thought I should look into and medications that could help.  Tom listened to it all intently, nodding as the doctor told us both that he thought I should go and see my doctor as soon as possible.  I wasn’t listening, not really.  I was  past the po int of caring by then.  I was mortified by what I had done but also knew that I  wasn’t  going to stop.  Robert was there too, silently observing from a distance and I couldn’t look him in the eyes.  I was ashamed and lost but not entirely sure that I actually wanted any help.  I was sent home with a note of concern to give to my doctor and I tried to throw it away, not caring.  Tom wasn’t going to let it go easily though, not when he had just watched his best friend being sown up by an A&E nurse after having carved into her own arm.  He stayed with me that night, wrapping me in his arms and holding me close as I sobbed into his t-shirt.  When I had exhausted myself and finally fell into a troubled but dreamless sleep, he cradled me close and soothed me through the nightmares that showed up as the dawn was breaking.  The next day, after a subdued breakfast, he made the appointment with the doctor for me and he came with me 2 days later as a solid and silent support.  Robert was there too.  In fact, he had hardly left since that night at the hospital and just went to prove how damaged my mind was.  My subconscious was flailing in the dark and clutching to anything, any form of comfort and  that’s  exactly what he was.  He wasn’t real, I know that, but my mind was clearly desperate for something, anything to stem the flood of darkness that was threatening to overcome me.

I was diagnosed as a manic depressive and a plan of carefully selected drugs and therapy was devised.  I prefer the term manic depressive to the more recent bi-polar as I think it  describes  perfectly just what the  condition  is.  Bi-polar doesn ’ t do the illness justice.  Manic Depression is exactly what the disease is: periods of hyperactivity and mania  interspersed  with periods of deep depression.  Bi-polar makes it sound like the two states are evenly spaced and equal in measure to each other which could not be further from the truth.  I can go long periods of time with neither interfering at all.  Other times, my bouts of depression can last months, sometimes a year or more with hardly a hint of mania at all.  Yes, manic depression is a much more accurate description.

I had  therapy , which helped.  The meds I was given also helped to level me out and I was actually able to get out of bed most days.  But I was 18  and numb to the world so I didn’ t stop drinking.  In fact, it got worse.  I shouldn’t have been drinking on the medication I’d been given but I didn’t give a fuck.  I was addicted by then, although I wasn’t going to admit that to anyone, let alone myself.  I couldn’t stop.  The pills  could  take the edge off but the drink would claw me back towards the darkness and undo whatever good the therapy and meds had done.  I knew that I should stop and I knew how the booze would make me feel but I did it anyway.

Robert was around a lot by then.  He would be there in my therapy sessions, sitting in a corner silently.  I never told my therapist about him.  I had decided that he was a manifestation of my conscience and because I’d figured that out  for myself, the therapist didn’ t need to know.  He was just there, an ever present but mostly silent guardian, completely unable to intercept and stop the self destructive path that I was on.  And, in all honesty, as long as I wasn’t cutting myself, he seemed more than happy to join in with the drinking and weed smoking.  He even joined in when anyone started lining up coke at various parties, although I know he wasn’t really.  How could a figment of my imagination snort coke?  Ridiculous.  He never said anything about what I was doing, what either of us was doing.  He just laughed and smiled and joined in whenever he was around.  Which seemed to be a lot.   With the forces beyond my control starting to close in, I just wanted to lose myself in the familiar buzz that drink and drugs afforded me.  If I was out doing that, then I wasn’t at home with a  scalpel  and bottle of witch hazel so that was a good thing right?  And it also meant that I wasn’t at home to listen to my mother nag me about university or what I was going to do with my life.  I could  just forget all of that and let go.  It also meant that she couldn’t have a go about college and how my grades were rapidly going downhill.

But there were other pressures too like the  pressure to lose my virginity ,  seeing as most of my friends had already lost theirs.  We were all late bloomers in that respect, compared to the average but we were all pretty proud of that.  Most of my friends had boyfriends and girlfriends by that point and were in steady and happy relationships so sex was just the natural progression for them.  I hadn’t found anyone that I wanted to really kiss, let alone have sex with.  Neither had Tom really but then being gay, even in the late 90’s, wasn’t as widely excepted as it is n ow.  It wasn’t that people didn’ t know that Tom as gay, they did, it was just that it wasn’t really talked about.  A select few of us would head into London at the weekends and find a few gay bars and clubs that Tom really liked and spend the night there until the early hours of the morning.  I even found a few girls in those clubs that seemed to quite like the idea of kissing me so I was more than happy to go wherever Tom wanted at the weekends if it meant that I could get off with girls.  Robert was always there when we went and he seemed to enjoy  himself so  it became a regular thing.

I jokingly said to Tom one night that the two of us should totally do it and it my utter surprise he said yes.  Not joking, not messing around, he actually said yes.

“But.....but you love the cock!” was my supremely intelligent response as I stared at him, bewildered.  Tom just blushed and wouldn’t look me in the eye.  “Hey, Thomas, look at me. What’s this about?”

“Do you have to question it?  Can’t we just, y’know....”

“No, we can’t just  _ y’know.  _  what the fuck Thomas?”

“You offered,” Tom said, cheeks flaming and pulling away from me.

“Yes I did, but  I  didn’t think you’d take me seriously,” I replied, pulling him outside of the pub and away from prying ears and the constant noise.   “Do you  want  me to be serious about this?”

“Were you joking?”

“Do you want me to have been joking?”

“No.”

I still couldn’t quite get my head around what Tom was saying and the confusion must have shown on my face because he took pity on me.

“Look, is it pathetic to admit that the thought of having sex with....with anyone terrifies me ? ” He sighed, his shoulders slumped and I got it.  I got where he was coming from – it was a scary business losing one’s virginity.  It was the most intimate of acts and it scared me too.  It was then that I realised what Tom as getting at.  We both felt safe with each other, had known each other since before we were born so who better to take that step with.   Sure, we’d had our first kiss together but that was just out of curiosity rather than anything else. I was there, he was there and it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“No, it’s not pathetic,” I agreed and clambered into his lap to curl up.  “It scares me too.”

“So.......?”

“So, we might as well.  Although for someone who claims to love the peen so much, I’m not sure how you’re going to be able to get it up enough to actually do anything,” I joked and poked him in the ribs.

“I’ll have you know that I find the female form rather enticing, despite what people think,” Tom huffed and poked me back.  And that was that.  We disappeared upstairs and a few hours of fumbling, giggling and then finally gasping later, we’d done the deed.  It wasn’t the earth shattering, knee trembling experience that everyone hopes it will be but it was...... nice.  We weren’t drunk enough not to remember any of it and it felt nice to be that bit closer to my best friend.   It was like the final seal on our relationship and we’d never been closer.  It’s hard to describe the love that Tom and I have.  It’s not sexual by any means but it is deep and devoted and taking that step with each other forged an even deeper bond.  We wouldn’t do it again, ever but at that moment, I felt as close to another human being as I had with anyone.

College finished in a blur of failed exams, although  I  did manage to pass Sociology  somehow , just scraping through with a D. And didn’t that make me feel like a spectacular disappointment?  Tom got all A’s and B’s and was accepted into his first choice Uni.  Thankfully, it was in London so he’d be able to live at home for the 3 years he’d be going.  He’d thought about living in Halls but he decided against it, especially when if he lived at home, he’d be living rent free, not having to pay for food and his mum would still be doing his washing for him.  I wondered secretly if the reason to live at home had anything to do with me.  I was getting worse and I could tell that he was watching over me, making sure that I didn’t do anything stupid.  That night in A&E had shaken him and the guilt I felt when I thought that he was going to be staying at home could be due to me was overwhelming.  I hadn’t stopped with the self  harm;  in fact  I  was probably doing it more, just being more careful about where on my body I chose to mark.  My thighs were a pretty good spot as they hardly ever saw the light of day, especially not around other people.  And if Tom happened to see any of the marks and scars, he didn’t say anything.

I made the choice not to go to Uni, opting instead to go straight out to work.  Tom wasn’t taking a Gap Year so we had the summer together before he started Uni in early October 1998.  We went on holiday to Lazarote with a few others for 2 weeks and had a blast.  It was the first time abroad without parents for most of us and it went by in a blur of booze, drugs,  and lazy  days by the pool and clubbing.  When we got home, we had a month or so to just spend time lazing around before Uni started.  We both got jobs to earn a bit of money and then before I knew it,  it  was October and Tom was off to Uni.  He was still around, just not all day every day.  Most of my other friends had either gone off on a Gap Year or straight to Uni.  There were a couple of us that had decided to go straight into the work place.

My choice of job could not have been  destructive.  I already worked 4 nights out of 7 at my local pub which was turning out to be a total enabler for my drinking.  But I then started to run an off  licence  which meant that I was surrounded by booze day in, day out.  I started off by being able to ignore it when I was working in the shop but it further down the  line;  it would become a serious issue.  In the evenings, I was drinking for free thanks to the pub being a really popular one so it was always full.  Anyone that came up  to the  bar to buy a round would buy me one too so I would rack up the tally every night and by the end of every shift, I was usually completely plastered.

I was constantly drunk by that point.  It didn’t take all that long for me to start sneaking drinks during the day at the shop.  I was usually on shift on my own so while I was doing paperwork in the office out the back, I would slip a little something into my cup of tea or Coke.  It got to the stage when I  don’t  think there was a time  I  was ever sober.  At the age of 19  I  had become a full blown alcoholic, although I wasn’t about to admit that to myself.  I was losing weight, was plagued by bad dreams and  I  was fighting a losing battle with food  because  my stomach was finding it alien in comparison to whisky or vodka.   Whenever I struggled with a meal, I would just put it down to having had a particular heavy session the night before.   Tom wasn’t convinced but he couldn’t keep an eye on me all the time.  And I  didn’t  want him to.  He was off at stage school following his dream and I didn’t want to get in the way of that.  I would  NEVER  have got in t he way of that.

My depression spiralled ever dow nwards, fuelled by the booze.  At first, the alcohol would dull the gnawing void inside me but by that point, it was like throwing petrol on a fire.  I was still taking my meds, for all the good they did when washed down with scotch but I wasn’t seeing  a therapist anymore.  I couldn’ t face sitting there for an hour at a time and telling a complete stranger about my problems.  I already knew what my problems were.  

I kept up with Robert’s antics and downward spiral.  We weren’t so different, him and I.  He was out doing pretty much the same as I was, just on a much grander and public scale.  Party after party, arrest after arrest: not that much different from me.  I’d become a pretty violent drunk when I wasn’t working, often getting to that point of drunkenness where I picked a fight with just about anyone.  If someone gave any of my friends shit, I was right there throwing the first punch.  I lost count of the amount of times I was thrown out of clubs and pubs, often not remembering anything the next day but waking up with a split lip and knuckles.  If had got really bad, I would have sore ribs and a  bruised  cheek, sometimes even black eyes.  I would always refuse medical attention and just shuffle home to patch myself up.  I could see Tom starting to despair and the guilt just drove me to drink more.  I could tell that he wanted to help, wanted to make the pain go away but I was too far gone to ask.  And he knew that until I did that, there was nothing he could do.   He would get in the way if a fight broke out, often dragging me away before I could inflict too much damage on the other person or myself.   He’d walk me home and make sure I go to bed OK but other than that, he could only stand by and watch as his best friend slowly destroyed herself.  Even to this day, I  don’t  know how or why he put up with me.  I can never repay him for standing by me all that time and made sure I didn’t find myself bleeding to death in a ditch somewhere.

Robert would show up whenever he felt like it, often more out of it than I was.  One night when I was drunkenly closing up the pub he appeared, perched on the end of the bar as I haphazardly stacked the chairs on tables.  This time it looked like he wanted to say something, his eyes sombre and red rimmed as they watched me stumble about, cannoning off the corners of tables as I carried on trying to ignore him.

“What?” I snapped at him eventually, unable to take those eyes silently judging me.  At first he didn’t say anything so I shrugged and carried on, stopping briefly to down yet another shot of vodka.

“We both need to stop,” He said eventually and that stopped me in my tracks.  I turned to look at him through narrowed eyes as he stared back, sadness and regret written all over that gorgeous face.

“ M ‘fine ,” I slurred back, waving a hand to dismiss his statement.  “Got a’handl’ on it.”

“No, you don’t,” He replied, sliding down off the bar and squaring his shoulders.

“Neither do you,” I hissed at him, striding to the bar to lean over and snag the nearly empty bottle of scotch I had stashed there.  “But hey, at least I don’t pass out in  kids’  bedroom s.   Didn’t know you were that way inclined.” Robert’s face turned to stone at that, his eyes glinting with anger and shame.  It hadn’t been his shining moment, staggering home from a party and passing out in the bed of his neighbour’s child.  He’d mistaken the house for his own and I knew it was a low blow but I couldn’t help it.  I didn’t need him, a product of my broken mind telling me things I didn’t want to hear.

“Fuck you,” He breathed and then he was gone.  My shoulders slumped as soon as he disappeared, by hand gripping the scotch bottle like a lifeline.  Yes I was out of control but I wasn’t as out of control as he was.  I could handle it.  I could handle the empty void in my chest and the voices in my head.  I could handle the sadness in Tom’s eyes whenever he looked at me.  I could handle my family’s  disappointment  in my wasted private school education.  What I couldn’t handle was my imaginary friend berating me.

The drinking continued at an alarming pace and I was a fucking mess.  I was barely managing to make it to work on time in the mornings without alcohol of some kind.  Then I was only making it through the day by topping up the booze that was already a permanent fixture in my blood stream.  I was vomiting up most of the food that I managed to swallow and I was barely sleeping at all.  When I did sleep, it was because I’d dunk to the point of unconsciousness.  I had permanent  diarrhoea , my skin was getting paler and taking on a very faint yellow tinge that sometimes made me look green and my hair was beginning to thin.  The violent behaviour was getting worse and it wouldn’t be unusual to find me in the back of a police car on a Friday or Saturday night.  My life was spiralling out of control and I couldn’t get a grip on it.  I closing in on my 21 st  birthday and was well and  truly  in the grips of alcoholism.

I was also slowly poisoning those around me.  No-one wanted to go out on the town with me by that point because they knew how the night would end.  Tom, in his last year of stage school, was distancing himself from me and that was what finally broke my heart.  I don’t blame him for it: I was a disaster.  I needed him but I wasn’t about to stop the path I was on.  He was still there for me but not on nights out.  I will never resent him for it because I know why he did it.  But I never felt more alone that I did then.

Robert wasn’t fairing much better either.  Now whenever she showed up, he was drunker and more out of it than I was.  And he looked like shit.  Next time he showed up, I told him so.

“Looked in a mirror lately?” He snorted, stealing one of my cigarettes like he usually did.  

I hadn’t.  I very rarely looked in the mirror at all by that point, too disgusted and  ashamed  of what I saw.  I  couldn’t  face the sunken eyes and the pasty, clammy skin.  I didn’t want to see how gaunt and disgusting I had become.  My hair had even started to fall out by that point so in an Absinthe fuelled rage, I’d shaved the whole lot off and then razored away the rest.  I looked like a fucking AIDS patient and I didn’t want to see the stranger in the mirror looking back at me.  

“I can’t stop,” Was all I managed to whisper.

“Me neither,” he replied.


	5. Sweet and Divine, Razor of Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **HEED THE TRIGGER WARNINGS**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING - HEED THE TRIGGERS**
> 
> Alcohol abuse, self harm, suicide attempt, depression, rehab.
> 
> Again, this is unbeta'd. I just needed the word count so any and all mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Chapter title taken from the song Razor by The Foo Fighters.

**_ “We all have two lives. _ **

**_ The second begins when you realise you only have one.” _ **

  
                                                                                                            - Tom  Hiddleston   


I had been teetering on the brink of rock bottom for a while but the moment finally came in 2002 at the age of 22. 

I was at a party with Tom, one of the rare times that he was actually out with me in the evening.  It was a friend’s birthday and we were all at a local wine bar for a late dinner.  The champagne was flowing and everyone seemed to be having a good time.  I don’t know how I was even managing to stand up at that point.  But then, when you’re an alcoholic, you learn how to put on a facade for everyone.  It’s what I dubbed my ‘Tony Stark Media Face.’  After Tom had finally had enough of my drunken antics one night about 6 months previous, I had promised that I would behave better when we were all out together.  No more fighting and no more throwing my weight around.  I had agreed as there was nothing worse that Tom being angry or upset with me.  So, I would engage my inner Stark and put on a completely false personality when I was out in public.  It helped to get through some truly tedious parties and even if Tom was able to see right through me, he seemed to be relieved that I was behaving. 

That night in particular was dragging by.  The only thing on offer to drink was either champagne or wine and I wasn’t a big fan of either.  Still, it was free seeing as the Birthday Girl was richer than anyone I had ever met which meant a free bar.  So, I guzzled white wine and bubbly that was chilled to perfection and tried to make nice with everyone.  I was doing OK until I was confronted by a girl who I couldn’t quite place the name of but who looked vaguely familiar. 

“Still drinking like a fish I see,” She drawled as she sidled up to me and Tom who were taking a break from the making nice for a moment. 

“Excuse me?” I frowned at her.

“The wine.  Never see you without a drink in your hand,” She carried on, gesturing to the almost empty glass in my hand.   

“Do I know you?”  

She laughed then, clearly highly amused by the fact I had no idea who she was.  She placed a hand on my arm and leant in a bit closer. 

“I used to drink in your pub all the time darling.  You were always pissed,” She went on and I tried desperately to remember her face.  That was one of things that the booze messed with was my memory.  “I remember when you fell down the trap door into the beer cellar.  You were so drunk you didn’t notice that someone had left it open.” 

I froze as soon as the words were out of her mouth.  That was the moment that had lost me the bar job.  I’d been so drunk that I hadn’t heard my manager James say that the trap door down into the cellar was open.  I hadn’t noticed either and when I’d taken a drunken step backwards, I’d disappeared straight down cracking my head open on a wall on the way down.  They’d had to call an ambulance but the paramedics hadn’t been able to tell what of my behaviour was a head injury and what was drunkenness.  It was the last in a long line of incidents at the pub that had my manager reluctantly firing me.  I’d also lost the job at the off license after my area manager had figured out I was a drunk and had been stealing bottles of scotch. 

“It was always hilarious watching you stagger around.  But you look like you’ve sorted yourself out so good for you,” She said before she wandered off to talk to someone else. 

My blood ran cold.  I knew things were bad but for other people, people I didn’t know to come right up to me and point it out was just humiliating.  Tom looked at me with that sadness in his eyes that only ever seemed reserved for me and I couldn’t stand it.  Without saying a word, I put my glass down on the bar and ran.  I ran and ran until my diseased and broken body couldn’t run any more.  I ended up slumped on someone’s garden wall, sobs racking my body and the voices louder than ever in my head.  How had I let it get that bad?  How could I have let something take over everything?  My chest ached with the pain and embarrassment of it all.  I was a wreck, just a hollow shell of a person and as much as I had wanted to deny it all, there was no getting away from it at that point.  All the secretive drinking, the lying, all of it just such a mess.  How could I ever get back to normal after what I’d done?  What was normal?   

I cursed my broken mind, hating every last bit of myself.  Hating the blackness and the hopelessness that had taken over my life and rotted it away to the walking corpse I had become.  And I was.  I weighed hardly anything, the lack of food and constant drinking had robbed me of anything even vaguely resembling a healthy human being.  I was constantly under attack from the demons in my head, always listening to them when they told me how worthless I was.  I couldn’t stop them.  Nothing could stop them.  Where the drink and drugs had managed to keep them quiet for a while, nothing had works for some time.  I managed to tune them out enough on a daily basis to be able to at least function on some level but at night, when the darkness started to close in and I was running from my nightmares, they got louder.  Nothing worked.  Nothing could help me.  I was broken and useless and I felt the last of any fight I had leave me. 

I hauled myself up of the wall and headed for home.  There would be no-one there seeing as my brother was at school until the weekend and my mother was staying with her boyfriend of the moment.  The house was dark when I eventually got there and as soon as I was through the door, I headed straight for my hidden stash of scotch that I kept stuffed down behind the dishwasher.  No-one ever looked there so as far as I knew, my mother didn’t know about it.   Overwhelmed  by the utter pointlessness of everything, I settled in to get as drunk as humanly possible.  I was going on a Tony Stark bender and there was no-one  around to stop me.  And if I reached for a kitchen knife at the  same time then nobody was there  to witness me pull down my jeans and make the first cut of many that night.

I must have blacked out at some point over the next whisky fuelled few hours because when I came to, I was slumped on the kitchen floor, my back against the cupboards, an almost empty bottle of scotch in one hand and the kitchen knife in the other.  I’d clearly already used it to slice into my left thigh because there was blood on the blade and the cuts on my thigh were bleeding but they weren’t deep.  Not deep enough my poisoned mind was telling me.  Cut deeper, make it really hurt.  In fact, why not slice really deep and just end it all.  No-one cares about you.  No-one would miss you if you did it.  The universe won’t care.  What are you?  You’re nothing.  A tiny, insignificant spec on the map of the cosmos so why would anyone give a shit?  Go on, do it. 

T h e tears were falling  sluggi s hly , long past the frenzied sobbing of earlier.  T h e cuts on my thighs had put me in an almost  Zen  like state, t h e soreness just a dull throb b y then and a  reminder of just how pointless  I was.  How it all was.  T h e scotc h had got me drunk and  was now just a vague buzz.  I was  l ong past proper ly drunk and  was starting to sober up.  Drinking myself sober was nothing new and at that poi n t I k new  that  n o matter  how much  more I had, I wou l dn’t be able to get drunk  again that night .  But it didn’t stop me from taking another large swig from t h e bottle as I contemplated t h e knife in  m y other hand.  The blade glinted under the neon strip lighting on the kitchen ceiling and it would be so easy to just press it ag a inst the skin of my wrist and slice.  My head was lolling and my eyes were b l urred b y  tears an d  scotch but it would be so easy.   So fucking easy  m y  brain told me.  Just do it.  Look, the knife is  right there .

I had a moment of clarity then.  A calmness washed over me and it all made perfect sense.  All t h e pain and the anger would just stop.  It would all be gone.  Just gone and I would be free.  Fi n ally free.  I didn’t even care about those I’d be leaving behind.  Fuck th em all.  The  only ones I felt a tiny pang of guilt over were my father a n d Tom.  I knew what it would do to them but at that moment, I just wanted out.  They would be better off without me there.  They wouldn’t have to keep constant watch, always just waiting for me to do something truly awful and get myself killed.  And they wouldn’t have to watch me waste away in a booze filled hatred of myself. 

I was d o ne.  Done fig h ting, done just surviving and just existing.   Just so fucking done .

T h e scotch bottle clinked against t he tiled floor as I let it go and  I watched it roll under t he oven and I  cursed as  I  feebly  reached for it.  It’d  be a shame to waste what was left of  perfectly  good single malt. My head it the door of t h e cabinet be hind me as I  closed my eyes  and  took a few steadying breaths.  T h e room spun a  l ittle and I h ad the ridiculous thought that I  really should be sober to do what I was about to do.  A small snort of laug h ter escaped at the thought and I shook my head at myself.  Looking down at my ha n ds, the knife called to me.  There was a strange comfort in its cold steel and I look ed  at it like an old friend.   It wouldn’t be a quick or as  way to go about it and I vaguely  wished that I had a gun instead.   I’d rea d somewhere that drowning was  supposed to  be quite pea cefu l.  Pills would just make me vom it everywhere and there was a good c h ance that I would survive and have permanent brain damage or be locked in a never e n ding coma until someone pulled the plug.  Hanging was too muc h  like hard work and I had no rafters, banisters or ceiling fans to hang from.  And besides, I didn’t want it to be quick or painless.  I wanted to feel my wretched b l ood  l eavi ng my body.  I wanted to watch it for as long as I coul d keep my eyes open  for.   I needed to watc h  my pointless life paint t h e kitchen  a beautiful shade of red with  a fountain  o f wasted existence coati n g the floor and the walls.  I wanted to watch my sliced artery quiver and judder as it spewed forth my blood while my heart continued to frantically pump it around my body until there wasn’t enough left for it to keep going.  I didn’t want to live another second in my skin.  I just didn’t want to live any more.  

I raised t he knife and laid it horizontally along the  vein in my wrist that I could see.  If I was going  t o do this t h en I was going to do this properly.  None of that pathetic cutting across bollocks: I was going straight down the middle, open it up nice and  wide.  Then I just had to hope that I ’d be able to use that hand just enough  to be able to do the other wrist.  I t h ought briefly about leaving a note for Tom but then decided that  h e already knew how bad I was.  I fe l t bad for having just upped and left the party without telling him w h ere I was going.  It would probably be him that found me and I took a moment t feel shitty about that.

Then I thought about leaving a note for Robert whic h  made me cackle manically.  Leaving a  note for my imaginary friend!  Ho w pa th etic and broke n could  you get?  A 22 year old who still ha d  a make believe friend and I was thinking about leaving  h im a su i cide note !   Sad. Very, very sad.  The cackling turned into stra ngled sobs and I  pressed a  little harder with the knife, the cool steel  a blessed weight against my skin.  The knowledge that t h e perfect metal would soon be ending my worthless life was a relief.  I pressed  h arder still to calm my breathing and t ake one last look around my childho od kitchen.  I t  all meant nothing to me now.  The old pictures on the fridge door a distant memory of someone else.  The pig shaped biscuit barrel I’d got my mother for Christma s a lifetime ago sat silently judging me with it s chipped and cracked eyes.  They were all someone else’s memories, someone else’s life.  I wasn’t a part of it anymore.  I never really had been, not  f or a long time.

“What are y o u doing?”

“Oh,  _now_  you s h ow up,”  I snorted as  R obert appeared next to me, worry and fright  widening those beautiful deep  chocolate eyes as  h e took in the sight I must have been.

“What the  fuck  are you doing?”

“What does it fucking  look  like Einstein ?”

“Don’t do this, please,” His voice was small and pleading.  “You’ll regret it.”

“No I won’t, ‘cos I’ll be _dead_ ,” I huffed out, the ghost of a smile twitching the corner of my mouth.  

“You can’t do this. It’s not the way out.  You can get help, treatment.  Anything but this.”

“I’ve been getting help and it’s  _ NOT FUCKING WORKING _ !” I screamed breathlessly at him, looking anyw here but his face.  “I’m done,  I ’ve  had enough.  I can’t fight anymore, I just....I just  can’t. ”

“Don’t.  Please...... _ please _  don’t.”

“Why not?  It’s not like anyone is going to care.”

“ _ I’ll _  care.”

“ _** YOU’RE NOT FUCKING REAL ** _ !” I screamed at him , which shut him up.  I closed my eyes, hoping that I could will him away.  It was just my fucked up brain imagining him, I knew it was.  All these years and it was just my mind playing tricks on me.  The pain in my chest grew as I realised how attached I had got to someone who wasn’t real.  Well, at least not real in my life.  He was a real person somewhere thousands of mile s away on a different continent  but in my  world, he was just a ghost.  He was a  figment of my imagination dreamt up to help me cope.  I choked on a sob when I opened my eyes and he was stil l there.   Still crou ched next to me, hands hovering over my body, too scared to touch.   And was n ’t that just p erfect?  He  was just like everyone else – scared to touch me in case I broke.   My brain had decided that not even my  imaginary friend  wanted to touch me.   T h e thought made me push t h e tip of the knife into my  skin, breaking it with a pop but i t wasn’t a deep  enough , not yet.

“Just..... _ please _ .  I’ll get Tom.”

“How?  _YOU’RE. NOT. REAL._ ”  I hissed through gritted teeth , digging the knife in a bit deeper and I felt the blood start to ooze out across my skin.

“Just fucking  _ STOP _ , OK?  Get a fucking grip on yourself and  _ STOP _ ,” Robert snapped back, anger overtaking the worry.  We glared at each other, almost nose to nose.  There was no thing he could do to stop  me,  h e was all in my head .  Per h aps he was  th e rational side of my brain attempting to stop t he broken parts from doing what  I so wanted.

“You’re not real,” I whispered, tears silently rolling down my cheeks as I felt my heart break a little  b it more.  When I look e d up, his eyes had never looked so sad.  He leant his forehead a g ai n st mine,  and brought his hands  up to cup my cheeks.

“Just don’t.  _ Please _  sweetheart?”

“Nothing matters any more.  It’s all just nothing.  I’m nothing.  I just want the ache in my chest to stop.   It _hurts_.  Everything hurts.  Make it stop.  I just want it to stop.  Please .”

“It will.  With t h e right hep, it will. Trust me  honey , I should know,” Robert soothed, his thumbs rubbing my cheekbones.  And he  did  know seeing as  he was currently in rehab at the time.  “This is not the way out, it’s not.”

“It hurts so much,” I was sobbing again,  h ands fisted in the front of his shirt.  He felt so real and that just made the ache worse.

“I know honey, I know.”

We stayed like that for what could have been days for all I knew, me clinging to Robert as he knelt silently.  Whether he was the rational side of my brain or not, I didn’t care.  At that moment, he was my world, my one anchor  to a life so rotten  that  it  made me delay my plans a n d start to hope that ma y be it wasn’t all as bad as I had thought. He may have just been my im a gi n ation but as I slumped there breathing him in, surrounded by him, I felt a tiny flicker of hope start to burn.  We both  jumped when the front door s lammed open and Tom came skidding into the kitchen.

“ What the _ fuck _  Lucy ?” Tom panted, sinking to his knees ne x t to me and prising t h e knife out of my hand.  He threw it across the kitchen floor behind him before scoopi ng  m e  up and into his lap as he collapsed against the cabinets behind him.  I felt suddenly very small and childlike after being bundled up in Tom’s arms  and  something snapped, m y sobs wracking my body as I clung to him, clu ng to his strength a n d solidity.  

How could I have considered leaving him behind?   My  Thomas.  My best  f riend and  confidante .  M y  reason for living on more than  one occasion.  Ho w could I have t h ought so selfishly?  Ev e n if I  had  been dead, just knowing how hurt Tom would have been was enough to realise how utterly selfish I had been about to be.  I couldn’t leave my Other Half.  For all that I was broken and scared, Tom was life and sunshine.  He was that whisper of  a breeze on a stifling summer day.  He was the wa rm hearth on a snowy winter’s nigh t.  He was my reason to live.  He  made me want to  b e a b etter person.  Ho w could I have considered leaving him without his Other Half?  I was going to leave him  as broken as I was.  In order t o  stop my own pain, I was going to break the person that I cherished the most.

“I’m sorry, I’m so fucking. Sorrysorrysorry.......”

“ _Sshh_ baby girl, it’s OK,” Tom chanted quietly into the top of my head, my face pressed into his neck.  “You’re still here baby, you’re still here.  I’ve got you baby girl, I’ve got you.....”

And he did.  He really, really did.  Mind, body and soul.  Sure, we weren’t attracted to each other  that  way but we belonged with  each  other , soul mates for the longest time.  And for all those times Tom wasn’t there, Robert had been.

Robert.

My head jerked up and searched out the other constant in my life.  He was still there, sat quietly watching me with Tom with a comforted look on his face and a warm but  slightly  sad smile.

“Thank you,” I said to him weakly.

“For what?” Tom asked , not realising that I hadn’t been talking to him.

“For being there,” I repli e d in a small voice, looking directly  at Robert.  He took it for what it’s meaning  with a watery smile and a wink, he was gone.

“Any time baby girl, you know that,” Tom answered, clutching me tighter to him.  “We’ll get you all the help you need, OK?  But right now, I need to look at those cuts.  Can you let me do that darling?”

I ended up in A&E again except this time, instead of not listening to the doctor, I begged him for help.  It all came spilling out of me, everything.  I told him about the drinking, the cutting,  and the  depression, all of it.  Tom was by my side the entire time and any time I couldn’t answer a question from the doctor, he answered.  I was  appalled  by just how much he knew.  I thought I’d been doing a good job of keeping  everything  secret but Tom knew it all.  Every last pathetic and painful detail.  After a couple of hours, the doctor asked me terrifying question.

“When is your 23 rd  Birthday?”

“I n 6 months.  Why?”

“If you don’t accept the help I’m a bout to offer then you won’t  make it that far.”

I remember that the room fell so deathly silent in that moment that it was almost like being in a  vacuum .  Time seemed to stop and I will never, ever forget the look on Tom’s face.  I can’t even describe how he looked.  It was sadness, shock, terror and heartbreak, all rolled into one .  I felt so ashamed.  So utterly and completely ashamed. And guilty.  I had out that look on Tom’s face and I never wanted to see it there again. Especially not with me as the cause.

“It’s OK, you’re going to get the help you need,” The doctor said softly and started to go through paperwork with me.  I was to go to a rehab facility to be carefully monitored as they put me through detox.  I was going to have to take an array of drugs to stop my body from shutting down or having a stroke.  

A stroke at the age of 22.

That’s when it hit home just how bad things had got.  A  stroke .  My life had barely begun and I was under threat of something that happened to people twice, three times my age. After the detox, which would take up to a week, I would have all kinds of therapy.  I would  be given all the tools and tricks I would need to stay alcohol free and to start rebuilding my life.  I’d need to have a barrage of tests beforehand to check my liver and renal functions, along with other things.  It was  a lot  to take in given that I still had almost 2 bottle of whisky in my system but I said yes to all of it and I signed all the papers.

And then I was at the rehab centre going through the worst experience of my life.  Anyone who has been through detox knows what hell it is.  I can’t even bring myself to talk about it other than I’m glad I was feverish and  in and out of consciousness  for the worst part.  My body was going into  withdrawal  and it was like nothing I had ever experienced.  It was like a panic attack magnified by a thousand.  I lost count of the amount of times  I t  shit and pissed  myself;  lost count of the  amount  of times I tried to empty my stomach.  I was like the worst flu you’ve ever had with a stomach bug thrown in for good measure.  I also  hallucinated  all sorts of things, none of them good.  I remember screaming for Tom and Robert only to be put back to bed after having my sheets changed for the millionth time.  

It was hell and I am never going there again.

After the detox, I had to le arn how to cope without booze  and that was the truly hard part.  After having been so  dependent  on it for so long, it was the hardest part of the entire process.  Whilst I was at the rehab centre, it was fairly easy to get into the swing of things, to live without the booze.  But I knew that I would eventually be out in the world again, out in the world and dependant on myself to stay sober.  It was a daunting thought and I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I was terrified but the thought.  Family were allowed to visit after a few weeks and my mum and dad came together, a rare show of solidarity from the pair of them which I was grateful for.  As much as they still disliked each other, whenever myself or my brother was involved, they would come together in a united front.  Things were strained between me and my mother: she was blaming herself for not having done more to stop me drinking.  We went to therapy session together and she broke down, in the grip of the guilt she was carrying.  I was living in her house and she hadn’t noticed the hidden booze or just how bad I had got.  The therapist was firm with her, telling her that alcoholics that live with other people will often be very secretive and hide their addiction well.  There were other problems that I had with my mother but they could be worked out at another time.  The most important thing was that I got myself on the road to recovery before I could think about addressing that much more deep seated issues.

Tom visited whenever he could, splitting his time between his final exams and the rehab centre.  I kept trying to shoo him away, telling him that  his  exams were much more important.  He would just roll his eyes at me and pull out a text book and notepad.  We would spend the day out in the gardens while the late summer sun was shining, Tom doing some last minute revision and me scribbling notes in the diary that I’d been encouraged to keep.  It helped to a certain degree and I would go through it with my therapist every few days.  I dug that diary out when I started writing this and it was a strange experience,  reading it again after nearly a decade.  It was difficult to read at first but then I couldn’t put it down.  It was like reading about the life of a different person.  

Tom kept sneaking in magazine articles about Robert who was himself coming to the end of his stint in rehab.  Yes, the rehab stay was court ordered but this time he seemed to really mean it when he said it was going to stick this time.  I think, like me, he had just grown tired of everything and had decided it was time to get a grip.  I went to rehab voluntarily but his was pretty much forced – not the best way to ensure that rehab is successful.  But he seemed determined and I was incredibly proud of him.

He hadn’t been to visit yet and I was a little sad about that fact.  I missed him and despite the fact that the drugs I was on seemed to be working, I was sad that they seemed to have turned off the part of my brain that had come up with Robert.   The less than logical part of my mind would chastise me and say that he hadn’t been to visit because he was busy with his own problems and his own rehab.   Silly I know but that’s what I thought.  He did visit though, just nowhere  near as often as I’d have liked .

He appeared cross- legged  at the end of my bed one night, a particularly bad one.  I was  plagued  by nightmares and on top of that, I was still having  withdrawal  symptoms from the  lack  of alcohol.  That night seemed to have been especially bad and I had the chronic shakes or DT’s, completely unable to stop them.  I’d already thrown up everything I’d eaten that day and shit my pants twice.  I was curled up under my duvet, shivering and wishing it would all just stop.  

“Where have you been?” I snapped  half-heartedly  as he lay down on his back beside me.

“ In case  you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been busy,” He replied, staring at the ceiling.  We lay there in silence for a  while;  the only noise in the room was the occasion al  clacking of my teeth when a particularly violent shudder went through my body.

“Do you think we’ll make it?” I asked quietly, my voice smaller and more childlike that  I’d  ever heard it.

“I hope so,” Robert answered simply before he rolled over onto his side and huddled close until we were nose to nose on the same pillow.  “This isn’t my first rodeo by any means but this time it feels different.”

“Does it get better?”

“Yeah.  It takes time but it will get better.  Each day at a time and all that,” Robert smiled softly.

“I keep forgetting that this isn’t your first time.  Does it work?”

“Well, the last few times didn’t exactly pan out, did they?” He huffed out in a weak laugh.

“True.  But you’ll make it this time, you have to.  I’m using you as my inspiration so I’m counting on you.”  He laughed at that, his nose crinkling up as he shook his head.

“Well, now I _ have  _ to stay clean, don’t I?" He groused but there was no hea t in it.  “Now, roll over Kiddo;  I  wanna  to be big spoon.”

With a grin, I rolled over and Robert shuffled over to wrap me up in his arms.  It was nice and felt so real that for a moment, I almost forgot that he wasn’t actually there at all.  We were both quiet for long moments, my shaking slowly getting less and less as I started to relax.  Despite the fact he wasn’t real, I could feel the heat rolling of his body and I was amazed that my mind could  conjure  up that  sort of  illusion.  Still, I was in no position to argue and I was going  take  comfort in any form it presented itself, even when it was my celebrity imaginary friend.

“What did the doctor say?” Robert asked eventually, breaking the  comfortable  silence.

“That I wouldn’t see my 23 rd  birthday,” I replied and it was a harsh truth, saying it out loud like that but one that we both needed to hear.  I was making it out the other side of this, I  absolutely  was.  No ifs, no buts, I wasn’t going back to how things had been.  And despite the hopelessness that I’d been feeling, I didn’t want to go back to how it was.  I surprised myself by realising that I actually want to see what the future hel d  for me.

“Guess we both need to stay sober then, huh?” Robert  murmured  into the back of  my  neck and held me a bit tighter.  “Now go to sleep.”

I huffed out a laugh but I could already feel my eyelid s  starting to droop and it wasn’t long before sleep claimed me.  I felt safe in the imaginary embrace of Robert’s arms: safe and almost.....happy.  Almost.  When I woke up the next morning he was gone but I felt more refreshed than I had done in weeks.

I remember after nearly 6 weeks at the rehab centre I found a fragile inner peace.  After all the work with my therapist and finally finding the right antidepressants, I started to feel better.  The complete and utter hopelessness that had been my life for so many years was ever so slowly fading away.  The voices were still there and I was still having bad days, but I was starting to feel a little excited about the future.  I started to become eager to start rebuilding everything and starting again.  As much as I was utterly petrified by the prospect of not being under the careful eye of the rehab centre staff, I was also keen to get out there and start again.

The reality of being finally back out in the world was more terrifying than I could have imagined.  I realised that my entire life before rehab revolved around alcohol.   Everywhere I went, everything I did involved booze and that wasn’t a part of my life anymore, I didn’t know what to do with myself.   All of my friends were still going to the pub and why shouldn’t they?  They weren’t alcoholics so why shouldn’t they go to the pub?  My closest  friends understood and nights at the pub were replaced by dinners out at our favourite restaurants or pizza and a film at someone’s house.  In the beginning, wherever we all were, they would avoid ordering a bottle of wine or beer to go with their meals, opting instead of Coke or water as a show of solidarity for me.  And that alone was enough to drive me to tears as I realised what they were doing.  It was a show of understanding, a gesture that showed they knew how hard it was for me to get back out into the world and they were going to make it as easy for me as possible.  It made it easier for me in those first few months out of rehab.  I didn’t go back to the pub for a long time, scared that just stepping foot over the threshold would be enough to spark something in me and order a drink.

Robert was around a lot, both of us seemingly needing the other to help each other through.  Which was a ridiculous thought seeing as he wasn’t real.  But, I was happy to push that thought to the back of my mind and just enjoy him being around.  My brain was clearly happy to fill a gap with him and I was fine with that.  In fact ,  after over a decade of barely speaking to each other, we were getting to know each other finally.   Many a night was spent  slouched on the sofa playing Mario Kart or watching a film.  

He seemed happier  too and I knew that the biggest reason for that was because he had met Susan.  The change was amazing and every time he appeared, he just  looked better and better.  He had  colour back in his cheeks ,  and if it was at all possible, he  looked as  thought  he  was getting younger.   Even  now when I look at him I can’t believe that he’s nearly 50 years old.  I keep pestering him into telling me what his secret is but he just gives me a wry smile and walks away.  

One night, he appeared with a film that  I’d  never heard of called Monkey Love.

“You wouldn’t have  heard of it .  It’s not had a cinema release and won’t do either,” Robert explained as he sprawled out across the sofa right where I was about to park my backside.  I rolled my eyes at him and he scooted over just enough to let me sit down.  He then  promptly  put his head in m y l ap and pressed play on the video remote.  “You’ll like it.”

I did and one of the characters in particular, or actors to be precise, had me captivated.  That was the night I was introduced to Jeremy Renner and I was doomed.  Robert took one look at my face when the finished and giggled to himself.

“Told you  you !”

“You’re a n utter  shit, you know that right?”

“Yup,” He answered cheerfully, making an obnoxious popping sound with his lips on the p.  “But I’m an adorable shit.”

I rolled my eyes at him so hard I’m surprised they didn’t get stuck in the back of my head, which just made him laugh like a hyena.  I swatted him on the top of his head which was still in my lap and got a pout in return.

“You know that n ow I’m going to have to watch everything he’s ever done  so that I can  fling myself down the rabbit hole of obsession, don’t you?” I grumbled, running my  fingers  through his hair out of habit.  It was a guilty pleasure of mine.  So sue me, I have a thing for hair and Robert’s was always so gloriously shaggy and silky and he never protested so I just carried on doing it.

“I know,” He all but purred like he usually did when I was scratch ing his scalp with my nails.  “I t hought it might give you something else to concentrate on.”

And for that, I would always love that man.  He was trying to distract me from the booze and fill my days when Tom wasn’t around with something else.  I didn’t think I could ever not be amazed in the many different ways he  has  managed to save my life.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” Robert twisted his head around so he could look up at me.

“For everything,” I looked down at him, teary eyed.  “And one day, I’ll get to tell you that in person.”

“Um, you just did Kiddo,” Robert grinned, cocking his head to one side with a fond but bemused look on his face.

“You know what I mean,” I swatted the top of his head again.  

“Well, you just make sure you do.  And I’ll be waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta, the lovely and amazing bennysemma didn't want to beta this chapter or the last as she didn't want to read about me being in pain. As this work is essentially my life story and she's my Drift Bro, i totally get why she wouldn't want to read it. 
> 
> If anyone would like the job, i'd be most grateful. If you don't mind being a beta for some pretty sad and horrid stuff then gimme a shout: fannyvonfrank@gmail.com
> 
> I should also note that all my chapter titles come from songs. I'll do a complete list of them all when I'm done with this work. I'm also working on a playlist for the whole thing which I'll post at the end.


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